Returning to L'Escala, the idyllic Spanish village where they were once so happy, Oz Blackstone and Primavera Phillips are looking to forget the past.

But old ghosts are not so easy to placate, and the shadow of Oz's childhood sweetheart Jan, now tragically dead, is threatening to turn their relationship into a seething cauldron of bitterness and recrimination.

Until a body turns up face down in the swimming pool of their new villa, and suddenly they are very much back in harness again. Faced with the indifference of the local police, Oz and Prim are forced to investigate the murder themselves, and soon they begin to uncover a nest of very dangerous vipers beneath L'Escala's sunny exterior.

Praise for previous Quintin Jardine novels:

'If Ian Rankin is the Robert Carlyle of Scottish crime writers, then Jardine is surely its Sean Connery' Glasgow Herald

 'Jardine's plot is very cleverly constructed, every incident and every character has a justified place in the labyrinth of motives, and the final series of revelations follows logically from a surreptitious but well-placed series of clues' Gerald Kaufman

'Engrossing, believable characters ... captures Edinburgh beautifully... It all adds up to a very good read' Edinburgh Evening News