At a dark place in Edinburgh's heart, secrets refues to lie dormant.At Police Scotland HQ, Grace Macallan has pitched up in Counter Corruption. But the demons of her past are never far behind.Meanwhile, Edinburgh's gangland is in turmoil. As a new breed of upstarts challenges the old criminal order, their battle for territory causes serious havoc.Into the war steps DI Janet Hadden. Ambitious, hardbitten and addicted to risk-taking, she knows how to throw opponents off balance. But when she's thwarted, Hadden seeks help from a notorious underworld fixer, a man who keeps secrets but always extracts a price.Beset by violence and double-crossing, Grace is soon embroiled in a savage game of cat and mouse with colleagues and criminals alike. With all sides driven by dark desires, theirs is an endgame that will take Grace down unless she holds her nerve. 'Peter Ritchie pulls no punches with this gritty police procedural. A...

Expose the truth or let the dead lie still?Grace Macallan's life is on an even keel – at last. But a 9-to-5 career away from the frontline isn't all it's cracked up to be.So when she's sent to investigate a suicide at Glasgow's notorious Barlinnie prison, Grace gladly escapes her desk. The dead inmate is Tommy McMartin, heir to a ferocious criminal family. His murder conviction saw Tommy's fall from power; cast out not for violence but because the victim was his gay lover.The investigation drags Grace into contact with her McMartin adversaries of old. But the gangland dynasty is under threat and, as it topples, secrets once dead and buried are unearthed.As she unravels Tommy McMartin's fate, Grace senses someone watching her from the shadows, someone who aches for revenge. An awful dilemma faces her: to expose the truth or let the dead lie still.

DCI Grace Macallan's career has hit a serious roadblock. When a covert police operation in Northern Ireland goes badly wrong, she's faced with a painful decision – lie to save a young officer's career or tell the truth and ruin her own reputation. For Grace, there can be only one answer.Reassigned to the newly formed Lothian & Borders Major Crime Team, Grace Macallan is forced to rebuild her career and her reputation. But when a brutal attack on a prostitute turns into a series of murders, the Major Crime Team is under serious pressure. The tabloid headlines are lurid and the team badly needs a result.With a new life to build in a new city, a new boss as smooth as an 18-year-old malt and a very high profile lawyer as the chief suspect, Grace soon begins to wonder if telling the truth is always the right thing to do.What people are saying about Cause of Death:"A first-rate police procedural by someone who evidently knows what he's talking...

Billy Nelson is back home in battle-scarred Belfast. But the Troubles have cut this ex-Army Loyalist hard man deep – and now that his city's allegiances have shifted, nothing is quite the same.An outbreak of gang violence forces Billy to move on. This time to Edinburgh, where he muscles in on the capital's drug trade and the family who run it. As the balance of power tips, underworld rivalries between Edinburgh, Glasgow and Belfast spill out onto the streets.With a spate of horrific incidents and a trail of victims, the pressure is mounting for Grace Macallan, new superintendent of the Crime & Counter Terrorism Directorate. Troubled by her own demons and with everyone baying for the blood of Billy Nelson and his old paramilitary contacts, can Grace hold her nerve?Revised edition – previously published as The Shortest Days of the Year

Grace Macallan is at breaking point. All around her, events threaten to run out of control – and a new investigation is testing her to the limit. An undercover officer is missing and a woman is washed up, traumatised and barely alive, on the shores of Berwickshire. She has witnessed horror on the dark waters of the North Sea, but survival turns her life from a bad dream into a nightmare. As she untangles the woman's story, Grace is drawn into a cold-blooded criminal world. At its head is Pete Handyside, a notorious gangland boss who will fight hard and dirty to control his brutal empire and keep the money flowing. But a traitor in his midst is intent upon betrayal – a betrayal that triggers an uncontrollable wave of violence. As she hones in on crucial evidence, Grace knows that one wrong move could end in tragedy. Revised edition – previously published as Red Sky in Morning