"At night, Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur's special informant Jack Lamb, takes him out to a moored vessel in the dock and shows him the body of a tortured and murdered low-level drug pusher, Slow Victor. He is strung up in one of the cabins 'like a leopard on a pole between safari porters'. Why has such a nonentity been punished and silenced so violently? As Harpur starts his inquiries he uncovers bit by bit a plot that stretches deep into the apparently distinguished realms of business and politics." "At the same time, Harpur and his malevolent superior, Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles, have to accept the possibility that one of their senior colleagues is on the take, secretly telling major villains how to beat the police investigation. In turn, though, the villains suspect this seemingly bent officer might be tempting them into a clever trap. Amid the soaring tensions that result, nobody can trust anyone and in this atmosphere of fear people on both sides of the law are sure to die."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved