Cross by name and cross by nature; just a smalltime private dick with big-time demons. He's barely getting by between a rock and a hard place in darkest Sleasby, fetid sinkhole of sin where his only friend is an ex Para, his solitary solace a young romantic whore, and his last refuge the Jezebel, a seedy canal boat with a hidden secret. But nothing important enough to stop him running when the shit hits the fan. Unless of course it's already too late? Cross is hired by Harry James, gangland boss and owner of the Kitty Kat Club, to track down two missing porn stars with sticky fingers. Now Cross is living dangerously on borrowed time and stirring a noxious stew of graft and corruption set in train by a long dead pimp from the Big Smoke. Who said the dead had no voice? So now the hunt's on to find the sordid secret at the centre of this tangled web of deadly intrigue before Cross becomes part of a new underpass. It's either that or cut and run. Before things get really ugly