Hull, northern England.
Two weeks before Christmas, an old man – the only survivor of a fishing trawler tragedy 40 years before – is found murdered at sea.
In a church, a young girl – the last surviving member of a family slaughtered during the conflict in Sierra Leone – is hacked to death with a machete.
A drug addict, who fled the burning house where he had set his family alight, is found incinerated on a rundown Hull council estate.
Somebody, it seems, is killing sole survivors in the manner they once cheated fate.
It falls to Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy of the Humberside CID Serious Crime Unit to find out whom. McAvoy – despite being a six-foot-five, man mountain of a police officer – is not your typical, bullish detective. A shy, gentle giant; he is a stickler for the rules; more dab hand with a database than gung-ho with a gun.
Desperate to prove his worth to his colleagues in the force, McAvoy knows he must establish the motive behind the killings if he is to have any chance of pinning the perpetrator. And he must do so quickly, as this twisted killer shows no sign of stopping.
McAvoy's task, therefore, is simple: join the dots, before more join the dead.
