Cruel Summer

JAKE SAWYER is in demand. With his profile raised after his successes in the Peak District, he’s called to London to help the Met Murder Squad with a baffling case which has shocked the nation.

A family of four has been tortured and murdered in their Hammersmith home. The crime’s disturbing details are kept private to protect the victims’ dignity and to deter copycats. But when the killer strikes again, so soon after the first attack, the pressure mounts to understand his motives before a third family faces his wrath.

Starved of hard evidence, the capital’s smartest detectives feed on scraps of speculation. As Sawyer struggles to settle in the big city and keep his mental health in balance, he follows a theory about the killer which leads him deep into an urban underworld where the lines between pleasure and pain are blurred.