Detective Chief Superintendent Bob Skinner is a hard man. As head of Edinburgh's CID he has seen it all, but the discovery of a savaged corpse in a dark alleyway just off the famous Royal Mile comes as a shock even to him. The victim is soon identified as a successful young lawyer, and the motive for his brutal death is an utter mystery. As further seemingly random killings scandalise the city, a disturbing pattern seems to emerge which points to a vicious serial killer. But then the murdered lawyer's fiancee dies in ambiguous circumstances which seem beyond the bounds of mere coincidence. His suspicions aroused, Skinner and his team begin to probe both the present and the past. What he eventually uncovers is an elaborate smokescreen shrouding a deep-rooted and very intricate conspiracy. But whatever the danger to himself, and whatever political expediencies surround this bizarre sequence of violent killings, he becomes ever more determined that in Edinburgh, at least, folk will abide by Skinner's rules.