Interpol have tried and failed to find her. Now the combined forces of Scotland Yard and MI5 must try the impossible to prevent a major international incident.

    On the same day as the gruesome discovery, a young psychiatrist starts her first job at a secure asylum for the criminally insane, just a few miles away. Commandant Servaz, a Toulouse city cop, can't believe he has been called out over the death of an animal. But there is something disturbing about this crime that he cannot ignore. Then DNA from one of the most notorious inmates of the asylum is found on the corpse... and a few days later the first murder takes place. In this snowbound valley, deep in the Pyrenees, a dark story of madness and revenge is unfolding. It will take all of Servaz's skill to solve it.

    Meredith Winterbottom, a resident of Jerusalem Lane--a quaint section of London inhabited by Eastern European immigrants--and a great-granddaughter of Karl Marx, is found dead. Was she the victim of greedy real-estate developers, or was she killed for the politics of another age? When a second Marx sister is killed, David Brock, Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard, is brought in to help. As Kathy and Brock delve into the Lane's eccentric melting pot, they find unpublished letters from Marx to Engels; a possible fourth volume of Das Kapital; an endless list of shady suspects; and a plot to end Kathy's investigating days for good. Can they unravel the mystery before Kathy's first case is her last?