The Hangman's Song

DCI Jo Dexter and DI Anthony McLean with their team have been watching a ship in port anticipating that it is going to be dropping off some illegal cargo.  When a supply van pulls up, McLean realises that it is actually being loaded up with illegal human cargo.  Why are sixteen prostitutes being shipped out of country?  Usually human smugglers are bringing them in, but now they are taking them out.

While doing the paper work on the bust, McLean receives news that Emma, his girlfriend has awoken from her coma.  Unfortunately when he arrives at the hospital she doesn't recognise him.

While up to his eyeballs in paperwork, he is asked by DC MacBride to check out a suicide.  McLean agrees with the DC's assessment that there is something fishy about it.  However both get a bollocking from Acting Superintendent Duguid for not writing it off as a suicide.  Later DS Ritchie adds her voice to the suspiciousness of the incident. When the three officers attend the post mortem, the pathologist furthers their suspicions with what he finds.

When a badly decomposed body turns out to be the pimp involved in the people smuggling scheme, McLean finds out about corrupt police ind the sex crimes unit, but what to do about it?  Meantime the two suicides must be tied together, but what is the connection, other than the use of hemp rope?  And where is the rest of the hemp rope that one of the suicides used?  Are there more suicides out there or to come as part of a suicide pact?

After a third apparent suicide appears, a specialist in knots shows McLean that they were all hangman's knots tied in exactly the same manner.  The pathologist also shows that the broken necks were on exactly the same vertebrae.

One of the prostitutes who has provided McLean with information is badly beaten and slashed.  He is sure that one of coppers in his unit is responsible, but how can he prove it?

Author James Oswald has plenty of twists, turns and surprises awaiting the reader in this murder mystery.  You will find yourself engrossed in the book; a real page turner.