For years Panicking Ralph Ember and Mansel Shale have run profitable drugs empires in peaceful cooperation with each other, and ACC Iles will blind-eye their trade as long as it keeps violence off the streets. But this happy arrangement is threatened by foreign dealers moving in and offering not just drugs, but punters exploited girls from Eastern Europe. And bloody gang warfare threatens as a scrabble for territory ensues."

Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles s absence from a police undercover conference sets the stage for the moral and practical dilemmas faced by one of his colleagues, ACC Esther Davidson, as she works to bring down the largest gang operating in her sector. The role of undercover agents or out-located officers is brought into sharp focus as James masterfully unfolds the story of Davidson s decision to infiltrate the gang against the events of the resulting court case."

There s intrigue right from the start of this new entry in Bill James s Harpur and Iles series: A houseful of paintings is stolen and the body of a finely dressed stranger is discovered. Villainous drug dealers fight for dominance on Constable Iles and Detective Harpur s turf. While the kingpins maneuver and scheme, Harpur is helped-or hindered?-by his very persistent daughters and by Iles s irregular and perhaps illicit methods. In this fast-paced thriller, there s no telling who will catch the next bullet."

For years drug baron Ralph Ember has run his crooked enterprises peacefully enough alongside those of his rival, Mansel Shale. Their empires have been tolerated by Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles as a way of keeping violence off the streets. But are things changing? Karl Marx s bleak theory that all capitalists including drug tycoons lust for monopoly seems to be coming true. Do Ember and Shale long for sole control of the trade and the profits? Ember fears that Shale now wants to kill him and take over his firm. Shale, on the other hand, is about to get remarried and believing in...

A woman and her stepson are gunned down while driving to school on a quiet residential street. An former bodyguard kills himself by firing two pistols simultaneously. Was the killer really aft er the woman s husband, the notorious drug baron Mansel Shale? And what possible connection could Shale s collection of pre-Raphaelite works of art have to the killings? Nothing in Bill James s latest Harpur & Iles thriller is as it seems. When the police chase the shooting suspect into a busy second-hand shop the action quickly turns into a deadly cat-and-mouse standoff . As the siege unfolds, with...