An impoverished child murderer unexpectedly appeals his conviction. In return for a reduced sentence, he offers to implicate those who were involved in the crimes but never caught, provide evidence of police corruption, and, most importantly, reveal the whereabouts of the corpses of several teenage girls. Distressed at what may come to light, yet desperate to locate the body of his own missing daughter, the father of one of the girls approaches Private Investigator Leo Rivers with a plea for help.

The second stunning literary crime novel in the Song Cycle trilogy from the acclaimed author of Booker-longlisted Peacetime, and The Book of the Heathen . In this second book in the acclaimed trilogy that began with Cradle Song, Private investigator Leo Rivers is approached by the mother of a girl who disappeared a year earlier in violent and mysterious circumstances. Investigating both the background to this disappearance, and the man held to be responsible, Rivers is drawn through a long, hot summer into a world of human-trafficking and governmental corruption at every turn, each unraveled piece of the mystery moving him further from the vanished girl and deeper into a web of exploitation, greed, temptation, revenge and violence from which even he is eventually unable to extricate himself without unforeseen and tragic consequences.

The third stunning literary crime novel in the Song Cycle trilogy, from the acclaimed author of Booker-longlisted Peacetime, and The Book of the Heathen . Hull private investigator Leo Rivers finds himself in a battle to keep tabloid sensationalism out of his quest for the truth behind the savage murder of a young prostitute. Investigating one death in a sequence of similar killings, Rivers is brought into conflict with an ambitious chief-of-police set on as much personal gain as possible from the search for Hull’s first modern serial killer. Set against a backdrop of the Humber river and the gradual destruction of the fishing industry, Rivers is drawn into a world of exploitation, ambition, vanity and violence in this final volume in a trilogy of outstanding contemporary noir.