A detective's dark past meets his violent present in "[a] rich tapestry that lifts the police procedural into the realm of the mainstream novel" (Sue Grafton). It starts with five professional thieves. At their first robbery, they press a sawed-off shotgun against a bank manager's head, and leave with nearly forty thousand pounds. They repeat the trick three times, raking in nearly half a million in cash. They have yet to kill, but with each raid they come closer to taking their bounty in blood. The Nottingham police department charges the brilliant but troubled Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick with stopping the crime spree. When the robberies turn violent, he can no longer deny their similarity to a long-buried incident from ten years ago, when a confrontation with a sociopathic killer nearly cost him his life. To halt this chilling crime wave, he must reopen a case he has spent a decade trying to forget.