DEAD MAN'S SLAUGHTER

Inner-city Bristol: seventy-three kilos of A-grade heroin, worth a cool few million pounds, have gone missing from the city's streets. A lot of people on both sides of the law want to get their hands on it. But Julius Spicer, tipped to have been its likeliest 'liberator', has just been brutally murdered. DS Vic Hallam is sick of corruption in the force, but stays on to rile his superiors and throw the odd spanner in the works. DC John Cromer, Hallam's do-good partner, gets mixed up with the beautiful Opal MacAlpine, Julius's stepdaughter. Opal's a suspect in his murder and is also now the closest connection to the heroin. Opal swears she doesn't know where the dead man's slaughter is but some heavy-duty underworld figures are sure they can make her change her tune. Vic and Cromer, unwittingly in it up to their necks, find themselves protecting Opal in a race to retrieve the heroin. But the force's powers-that-be know more than they're letting on and have other plans...