A young woman named Mardi Jack is killed by a sniper's bullet in a Sydney apartment apparently owned by a wealthy businessman, Boru O'Brien, who has ties to seedy goings-on and to the Prime Minister's wife. O'Brien, the real target of the assassin, had been a cadet with Detective Inspector Scobie Malone two decades earlier, and after Jim Knoble, another police academy classmate, is also professionally shot, the mantle falls to Malone to investigate the case. Forced into hiding and afraid for the safety of his family, Malone must find a psychopathic serial killer before he, too, is stopped by a gun's explosion.

When the Sydney police minister's son falls twenty floors to his death, the politics of murder ripple the city like a boulder into a pool. Caught in the wash is Detective Inspector Scobie Malone, as he uncovers an elaborate financial scheme, a series of cold-blooded precision killings, and layers of political intrigue. Scobie thinks he is immune to politics, but he is soon engulfed in its consequences: The police minister applies pressure, a millionaire banker becomes less than his public image, a hit man goes about his grisly work, and three of Sydney's most powerful (and libidinous) women give Scobie a glimpse of how life in Sydney really operates. Finally, when he is forced to accept aid from his onetime enemy, top criminal Jack Aldwych, now retired but still ruthless, Malone learns once again that when politics and money are arrayed against him, the odds are never even.

Scobie Malone is leaving the Homicide and Serial Offenders Unit of the Sydney police, and his last investigation could be his most bizarre. When a housemaid is found dead in a dotcom millionaire's penthouse, Scobie suspects a kidnap that's gone wrong. But never in his wildest dreams could he imagine just how wrong. The kidnappers' plan to grab a millionaire's girlfriend has instead netted them a millionaire. Worse, the dotcom bubble has burst, leaving the millionaire in debt to the YaKuza and high on their hit list. The trial leads Scobie to renew the acquaintance of some old adversaries...

From the award-winning Jon Cleary comes a story of four sisters - Nina, Margaret, Sally and Pru - the beautiful and wilful daughters of Lucas Beaufort, the richest man in Kansas City. Nina, Margaret, Sally and Prue – the four beautiful and spoilt daughters of the richest and most powerful man in Kansas. They took what they wanted and loved whoever they pleased. Their father could buy them anything they desired, but even his wealth could not buy them happiness.