This is the follow-up to 2009’s The Complaints, which introduced us to Malcolm Fox and his internal investigation unit. Fox’s group is something of a renegade band, disliked even by their superiors, yet able to wield ever-greater powers of investigation thanks to the establishment’s commitment to police transparency. The story begins in Fife, where Fox’s team is sent to investigate a local police station where officers have been covering a corrupt colleague’s misdemeanors. The charges at first appear quite typical: extortion and abuse of power, and a catalogue of cover-ups and lies to protect one of the gang. Fox’s team start picking at the evidence and soon begin unraveling truths that go deeper than any of them imagined, uncovering a conspiracy so deep-rooted and tangled in links to a terrorist past, that it must be solved as quickly as possible. An excellent book and a must-read crime novel if ever there was.
