Detective Lola Harris returns from a miserable solo holiday - an effort to get over her useless ex - only to find herself in charge of a high-stakes investigation. She rushes to a crime scene in the historic Gallowgate neighbourhood. The smell in the basement is thick and sweet, even through Lola's forensic mask. The old wooden chair and the rope hanging from its arms are stained red. The earth below is saturated with blood. Six candleholders, their lights burned out, lend the scene an air of a completed ritual. And yet there is no sign of a body. A smashed-up phone in the corner puts the investigators on the trail of a local politician who has vanished without trace and a controversial artist who died thirty years ago on a remote Hebridean island. Lola will have to work with the most obnoxious detective in Glasgow if she's going to stop the killer from striking again.