Detective Sergeant Logan MacRae has been bumped to D.I. Roberta Steel's "Screw-Up Squad" after a raid he led on a warehouse rumored to be full of stolen property ended with no arrests and one officer critically injured. The backstabbing, limelight-stealing laziest D.I on Aberdeen's police force, Steel's team is made up of 'no-hoppers,' the most worthless or inexperienced members of the homicide department, and Logan will do anything to prove he doesn't belong there. Including working overtime on two baffling cases: the murder by arson of six people, and the beating to death of a prostitute down by the docks, not a high priority compared to the fire. At least not until another prostitute winds up dead.

Although both cases seem simple on the surface-turns out the fire's victims are part of a drug dealer's inner circle, and what fate is to be expected for working girls in Aberdeen's red light district?-in Stuart MacBride's hands, what's going on in this rainy Scottish city is bound to be much more complicated than it appears.