Chief Constable Riddle, a man who has been actively working to destroy the career of Inspector Alan Banks, now needs Bank's help. Pictures of Riddle's missing daughter have turned up on a pornographic website. And though the Chief Constable abhors his methods, Banks is the one policeman who can best handle the investigation.
But the search for a missing and debased young woman is drawing Banks deep into London's sordid underbelly of drugs, crime, and sex. And the truth he finds down there in the muck could destroy him and his senior officer too.