Belfast, 1976. The city is rife with rackets. Paramilitary gangs, the British Army, Police and Intelligence struggle for control. A young man vanishes and his severed arm is discovered in a refuse dump. Haunted by the failure of an earlier investigation, Inspector McCann is led to the Sceptre Bar.But there he is assaulted and his constable, the sassy, wild Sinead Donnelly is abducted. Who can he trust to back him up?A desperate bid to free Donnelly leads to McCann's torture and a deal of sorts with his captor points him to the discovery of the young man's remains. But how much further can McCann go to break the wall of silence that surrounds the victim's last hours? Will McCann be able to redeem himself by solving the case that haunts him? Will those above him allow him to do so?

Pat Gray's second Inspector McCann mystery goes to the heart of the moral darkness that was Ulster's troubles. It is a worthy sequel to Dirty Old Tricks.

Pat Gray was born in Belfast. He is the author of five novels: Mr Narrator, and The Political Map of the Heart, an account of growing up in Belfast which won the World One Day Novel Cup and was published in an extended form in 2001. His satirical novel The Cat was re-issued in 2015 and has been translated into several languages. Dirty Old Tricks, his first detective novel, was published by Dedalus in 2020 followed in 2022 by The Redemption Cut.
He has worked extensively in Eastern Europe, but now lives in London.