Liverpool: a suburban crime family grips a whole city with fear.

And their ambition reaches further still.

Galicia: an entire community waits on the windswept edge of Europe for the delivery of four tonnes of cocaine, brought across the ocean in an almost unbelievable craft.

London: Jonas Merrick, grey and quiet, alone in a small office, seems an unlikely character to be tasked with bringing down an international drug network.

But while Jonas's colleagues regard him as scratchy, fastidious, old, he is also ruthless, cunning and brutally pragmatic. And he has a man on the inside: a would-be money-launderer on that wild Spanish coast. A man who has been undercover for so long, he has almost forgotten who he really is.

And he is due to come home. Has to. For he will be given no mercy if he is caught.

But Jonas needs him to stay.

The superb Jonas Merrick is fast becoming one of the great figures of British spy fiction. In At The Kill may be his most compelling story yet.