On a humid summer night in Gibraltar, lawyer Spike Sanguinetti finds Solomon Hassan, an old school friend, waiting on his doorstep. Accused of murdering a Spanish girl in Tangiers, Solomon swears his innocence. He has managed to skip across the Straits, but the Moroccan authorities demand his return. Spike travels to Tangiers in the hope of delaying the extradition. Solomon's boss, Nadeer-the founder of a renewable-energy company called Dunetech that is on the verge of financing an enormous solar-powered site in the Sahara-suggests that if Spike can delay Solomon's trial until after the deal is signed, he will persuade the governor of Tangiers to bury the extradition demand. Complicating this offer, Spike encounters a Bedouin girl who insists that Dunetech is engaged in a nefarious scheme linked to the disappearance of her father. As Spike uncovers the truth, he finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into a world of secrets, corruption, and murderous lies.

Just as a degree of calm returns to Spike Sanguinetti's life in Gibraltar, he receives the shocking news that his Maltese uncle and aunt are dead after a domestic dispute escalated into a blood-soaked murder-suicide. Accompanied by his aging father, Spike crosses the Mediterranean to Malta for the funerals. It falls to Spike, a lawyer, to act as executor of the wills. The more he looks into his relatives' deaths, however, the more he is faced by a troubling question: what could have prompted a mild-mannered art historian to stab his wife to death, then turn the knife upon himself? After reuniting with an ex-girlfriend, Zahra, now working in Malta as a translator, Spike embarks on a dangerous trail that leads all the way from the island's squalid immigrant tent camps to the ornate palazzos of the legendary Knights of St John. In Malta, the oldest Christian nation in the world, self-interest can masquerade as charity, and what first appears to be worthless can prove valuable beyond price.

'Very original, and brilliantly rendered … a rare and enviable talent' – William Boyd The late-morning sun beats down on the Rock of Gibraltar as bored tourists photograph the Barbary Apes. A child’s scream pierces the silence as she sees a monkey cradling a macabre trophy. A man’s severed arm. In the narrow streets of the Old Town below, lawyer Spike Sanguinetti’s friend and colleague is critically injured in a mysterious hit-and-run. Spike must drop everything and return home to Gibraltar, where he is drawn into a case defending a ruthless salvage company hunting for treasure in the Straits. As Spike battles to save his business, he realises that his investigations have triggered a terrifying sequence of events, and that everything he holds dear is under threat.

A local man murdered. A young woman missing. A dark secret unearthed. Spike Sanguinetti is back in the gripping new story from thrilling crime writer Thomas Mogford. Haunted by his failure to prevent the violent murders of two innocent women, Gibraltarian lawyer Spike Sanguinetti loses himself in his work. After much persuasion, he joins an old flame, Detective Sergeant Jessica Navarro, for a well-earned rest at a friend’s villa on Corfu’s beautiful northeast coast. There they meet philanthropist Leo Hoffmann, elderly scion of the powerful Hoffmann banking family. Leo has just unearthed an important archaeological site on the Corfiot coastline, but the lavish celebrations to mark the event are interrupted when the body of a young Albanian bludgeoned to death is discovered at the site. When a local man is arrested for the murder, Spike reluctantly agrees to defend him pro bono in what appears to be an “open and shut” case. Yet the more Spike delves into the facts surrounding the victim’s death, the more he starts to doubt the official version of events. As news emerges that a vulnerable young woman has gone missing, a frantic search begins, which sees the idyllic holiday island transformed into an arena of old rivalries, political corruption, and murder. Uncovering secrets so damaging that those involved will go to any lengths to protect them, Spike begins to realize that some sleeping dogs can never be allowed to lie.

A thousand cuts ... We may be few, but together we can change the world When a routine court case takes a sinister turn, defence lawyer Spike Sanguinetti starts asking dangerous questions that nobody seems to want answered. Soon, it’s not just the truth that’s at stake: it is everything and everyone that Spike holds precious. As the Gibraltarian sun beats relentlessly down, crimes of the past and present collide, relationships are tested and long-buried secrets exposed. Who can Spike trust? And where do his own loyalties lie?