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The serial killer had been at work for some time before anyone noticed. Sometimes even the parents didn't realise that their son was missing. The boys were all in their early teens, usually they'd been in trouble with the police and they were of mixed race. The murders took place in different parts of London and the bodies were mutilated. When Acting Superintendent Lynley is given the case he has to contend with the trauma and pressure of further boys being murdered as well as the political pressures within a Scotland Yard striving to prevent a charge of institutionalised racism being made by the media.

If I have to make a criticism it's that I think the book is overlong. At 644 pages in a hardback book it's almost the blunt instrument so beloved of crime novelists. I think a hundred pages could have been culled without greatly affecting the plot. I'm still glad that I took the chance though.

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