When Inspector John Rebus is called out of his jurisdiction to investigate a shooting at an elite private school north of Edinburgh, he’s momentarily lifted out of a personal nightmare. Rebus’s entire precinct suspects him of murder – because the day after the man who had been stalking Rebus’s partner, Detective Sergeant Siobhan Clarke, was found dead in a house fire, Rebus turned up with bandages covering severely burned hands.
But what at first seems like the perfect distraction soon becomes another intensely personal struggle: one of the victims in the school shooting is Rebus’s cousin. Desperate to avenge his family even while attempting to clear his own name, Rebus must ask himself what drives a man to kill – is it a matter of revenge, or a question of blood?