INTUITION IS EVERYTHING IN THE POLICE FORCE, SOMETHING THAT SERGEANT DON COLYEAR KNOWS BETTER THAN MOST. When a superior officer's decision not to respond to a routine disturbance has fatal consequences, Colyear finds himself sent away from Glasgow to work in a remote Highlands town. Despite not wanting to be there, a feeling shared by his commander, Colyear soon settles into life investigating petty crimes. But it isn't long before he discovers something sinister about the town. A series of teenage disappearances seem to have been ignored by the authorities, and when a groundsman from the local country estate is gruesomely murdered, Colyear suspects that long-held secrets could be coming to the surface. As the town's dark secrets are revealed, Colyear must trust his instincts to stay alive.

'Cut his eyes out, so he has. What kind of a monster could. Cut his eyes out?' The brutal murder of ten-year-old Callum Bradley sent shockwaves across Scotland but, as the weeks have stretched on with no solid leads, the investigation has been scaled back. Sergeant Don Colyear, Community Police Officer, is tasked with tying up a loose a 999 call which may have hinted at the boy's mutilation and murder. However, the call was made fully three weeks before the crime took place. The caller turns out to be a resident at an Edinburgh care home, drifting in and out of lucidity due to dementia. Enough to write off the potential lead as a dead end. But when a fresh murder disturbs the city, the clock is ticking and Don is drawn far away from his usual beat onto a dark path to catch a violent killer.

Don Colyear has begun his career in Edinburgh's CID, but the transition has not been easy. The workload and paperwork are one thing but being micro-managed by DCI Templeton as well is more than testing. And when Colyear's investigation into a mysterious death spirals into a complicated case centred on a massive consignment of Class A drugs, a double murder and a clash between low-level and professional criminals, his instincts are put to the test.