For years Panicking Ralph Ember and Mansel Shale have run profitable drugs empires in peaceful cooperation with each other - and Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles turns a blind-eye to their trade as long as it keeps violence off the streets. But this happy arrangement is threatened by foreign dealers moving in and offering punters not just drugs, but exploited girls from Eastern Europe.

These invaders have no respect for the old way of managing things and soon bloody gang warfare breaks out in a deadly scramble for territory.

'Another dodgy gavotte by the master of the revels . . . brilliant' Literary Review