Enzo MacLeod, a Scot teaching in southwest France, has confidently bet that he can crack seven notorious murders described in a book on cold cases. He has, in fact, solved the first two crimes, but the third is far from his mind right now. He’s just been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and he’s become the victim of someone who seems intent on destroying his credit and his relationships—and getting him arrested for murder.

This is one instance where his Scottish stubbornness might pay off. Having established a safe house to protect his loved ones, Enzo sets to work. Are his personal woes somehow connected to the digging he’s done into the brutal murder of a rent boy in a Paris apartment sixteen years ago? What further remnants of evidence will he find? And can he stay alive long enough to catch the long-hidden killer?

PETER MAY won the Scottish Young Journalist of the Year Award at age twenty-one and had his first novel published at twenty-six. He then became one of Scotland’s most successful and prolific television dramatists before turning again to novels. He is married to writer Janice Hally and lives in France.