For years drugs barons Ralph Ember and Mansel Shale have run their crooked empires peacefully alongside each other tolerated by Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles as way of keeping violence off the streets. But are things changing? Do Ember and Shale each long for sole control of the trade and the profits? Ember fears that Shale now wants to kill him and take over his firm. Iles and Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur must urgently try to head off possible out-and-out carnage.