For fans of Martina Cole; the original hard-boiled crime novels behind the hit TV series starring Clive Owen. Life as a private detective has proved too much for Nick Sharman, and when a chance run-in with a couple of young thugs secures him a job as a part-time barman, it looks as if he's found a promising new occupation. Unfortunately the drugs squad has other plans. With two coppers slaughtered in as many weeks, Sharman finds himself being coerced into helping track down the killers. All too soon he is working alongside a pony-tailed Detective Sergeant with unexpected sexual tastes, and consorting even more closely with a beautiful high-class whore who likes to be spanked... never mind some dangerously unpredictable big-spending villains. The perils of playing pig-in-the-middle certainly adds excitement to life, but Sharman is now mixing with some very bad company, and even he cannot predict the scale of the bloodbath that will follow.