A Detective Sergeant Adam Tyler Novel

Someone is setting fire to Sheffield. It starts with small things – dustbins and abandoned sheds – so people don’t notice at first. But the calling card is there if you look for it. Soon the fires spread to offices, homes, people. The Firewatcher’s followers are growing and they have one particular blaze in mind – one that the police would do well to pay attention to. But D/S Adam Tyler is distracted by a case, one that he is unknowingly connected to. And if he can’t discover the link between the fires and himself, he will burn – along with the entire city.

When financier Gerald Cartwright disappeared from his home six years ago, it was assumed he'd gone on the run from his creditors. But then a skeleton is found bricked up in the cellar of Cartwright's burned-out mansion, and it becomes clear Gerald never left alive. As the sole representative of South Yorkshire's Cold Case Review Unit, Detective Sergeant Adam Tyler is not expected to get results, but he knows this is the case that might finally kick start his floundering career. Luckily, he already has a suspect. Unluckily, that suspect is the man Tyler slept with the night before.

Sheffield’s beautiful Botanical Gardens - an oasis of peace in a world filled with sorrow, confusion and pain. And then, one morning, a body is found in the Gardens. A young woman, dead from a stab wound, buried in a quiet corner. Police quickly determine that the body’s been there for months. It would have gone undiscovered for years - but someone just sneaked into the Gardens and dug it up. Who is the victim? Who killed her and hid her body? Who dug her up? And who left a macabre marker on the body?

Under the dark cover of night, a figure climbs over the wall of the Botanical Garden with a bag and a metal detector. It's a dicey location in the populous city center, but they're on the hunt - and while most of what they find will be worthless, it takes only one big reward to justify the risk. Only this time, the nighthawker unearths a body....

For sixteen years, DS Adam Tyler has been searching for answers to his father, Richard’s, death. Convinced it wasn’t suicide, he has been investigating the case in secret. When a body is found in a frozen lake, linked to a cold case from 2002, it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the death of his father—except Tyler knows Richard was investigating the same case shortly before he died. And Tyler doesn’t believe in coincidences.

When an anonymous tip lands on his desk, DS Adam Tyler is intrigued in spite of himself. A tantalizing new lead in a 24-year-old unsolved disappearance is something he just can’t ignore, even while juggling a new boss, a heavy caseload and the early days of a fledgling relationship. But the letter triggers more than just a fresh investigation, and a shocking chain of events soon leaves him fighting for his life.