New Year's Eve 2021. The one night of the year when the guards are less vigilant. The perfect time for murder. Welcome to twenty-first-century Edinburgh: an oppressive, crime-free independent city state, run by the Council of City Guardians. New Labour has failed, and in the disastrous break-up of Britain, city states have formed fiefdoms, walling themselves off from other warring parts. In the "perfect" city republic of Edinburgh, electricity, food, and even sex are rationed. Television, private cars, and cigarettes are banned, and crime is a distant memory. But when the mutilated body of a man is found, subversive, blues-haunted private investigator Quintilian Dalrymple and his side-kick Davie are put back on the case. They must uncover the significance of the killer's eerie calling card-a blues cassette planted inside the victims' bodies. What is the connection between these tapes and a small blue tablet that causes a massive increase in alertness and sexual potency? Why does the Medical Directorate try to cover up the murder of an old man? Quint knows the solution-and the killer's identity-lies somewhere in the Bone Yard, if he can ever figure out what the Bone Yard is.