The first body is chained to a stake: strangled, and stabbed, with a burning tyre around its neck. But is this a gangland execution or something much darker? Someone's leaving little knots of bones outside Detective Inspector Logan McRae's house, but he's got more pressing things to worry about. Rival drug gangs are fighting over product and territory; two teenage lovers are missing; someone's crippling Asian immigrants; and Logan's been lumbered with an ambitious new Detective Sergeant, a mountain of paperwork, and the unwelcome attention of his superiors and the local crime boss. When another body turns up, it looks as if the similarities between these murders and the plot of a bestselling novel are more than just a coincidence. And perhaps those little knots of bones are more important than they look...