Inspector John Rebus has confronted Edinburgh’s most hardened criminals, its bloodiest crime scenes, and its most dangerous backstreets but nothing could have prepared him for what he finds on Fleshmarket Alley.

In the city’s red-light district, men live out their sordid fantasies, and women with no other choice sell their bodies to make a buck. It’s a neighborhood of lost inhibitions, forgotten scruples, and hopeless dreams. In its seediest clubs, refugees seeking asylum are subjected to the whims of the most ruthless characters in the crime world men Rebus knows all too well.