Decades of power. A lifetime of secrets. One bullet to end it all.
When right-wing media tycoon Forbes Stenhouse is found dead in his locked study on the eve of his eightieth birthday, the scene points to a textbook suicide. But DCI Harry Cole isn't buying it. Forbes was an abrasive tyrant, hated by his staff and loathed by a family he was days away from disinheriting in favour of his young second wife.
As Cole digs beneath the surface of the Stenhouse empire, the family feud evaporates into something far darker. Forbes wasn't just a media kingmaker, he was an escrow agent for some of the world's most dangerous syndicates, brokering deals between Russian networks and domestic street gangs to secretly fund a violent, radical insurgency within Britain.
Now, with Stenhouse dead, a million in blood money has vanished-and the fallout is turning lethal. A police contractor is executed, a kidnapping goes badly wrong, and a brutal underworld turf war looms. And when MI5 steps in to orchestrate a massive cover-up, Cole is left stranded between a rising body count and the ruthless efficiency of the Security Services.
In a world where the law is a mere suggestion and the "good guys" write their own rules, Cole faces a devastating dilemma: how do you punish the guilty when the truth is deemed a threat to national security?