A bullet to the brain abruptly halted a terrified young woman's desperate flight./n her pocket is the name of a policeman whose own life was brutally invaded,mercilessly shaken, and very nearly erased--a policeman who has since gone missing.

"Smart and shapely...Whenever I am asked to lecture on the British detective story, I choose one of his immaculately constructed books to illustrate the perfection of the form. If I were to give that lecture today, I would stick with Robinson, this time using Strange Affair." New York Times Book Review

The dead woman in the car had been running from something--but she didn't run far or fast enough. Detective Inspector Annie Cabbot would like to question the man the victim was apparently racing to meet: Annie's superior-and former lover--Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks. But Banks has vanished into the anonymous chaos of the city, drawn into a mad whirl of greed, inhumanity, and death, by a frantic phone call from the brother he no longer knows. Banks is unaware that the threads connecting a sinister kidnapping with a savage slaying are as thick as rope...and long enough for a haunted and broken rogue cop to hang himself.