Jasmine Sharp and Catherine McLeod

When a small-time heroin dealer turns up dead one fine morning in Scotland, no one is that surprised. Sleeping with a big-time drug trafficker's girlfriend can bring around plenty of enemies. Little wonder that Detective Superintendent Catherine McLeod has no shortage of early leads. If only out-of-work actress Jasmine Sharp could get a lead. With a career in nosedive, she's helping her uncle Jim with his PI work and having more than a little trouble learning the ropes. When her uncle goes missing, Sharp is thrown into the deep end. To find him she'll have to solve his most recent case-and do it solo.

Actress-turned-private investigator Jasmine Sharp is used to clients looking for long-lost relatives. When a woman hires her to find her missing sister, Sharp assumes the case will be straightforward. Instead, it pulls her back into the world of professional drama-and the warnings to mind her own business are coming on cue. Detective Superintendent Catherine McLeod's interest in theater is rising as well. She's just been called to the scene of a murder in the Highlands. A prominent figure in the Scottish arts community has suffered the worst review of his life-taken out by a sniper at an outdoor performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream. As Sharp and McLeod's paths cross, so do the secrets of the missing girl and the hot-shot victim. And they're leading to a mysterious Highlands estate where a conspiracy of drugs, sex, and satanic rituals is giving Sharp and McLeod a severe case of stage fright.

Glasgow Detective Superintendent Catherine McLeod should be smiling: She has a gangster in the mortuary and another, Glen Fallon, behind bars for allegedly taking him out. But fighting for conviction isn't going to be easy. McLeod's real motives might be more personal than she's letting on. And Fallon might not even be guilty. Private investigator Jasmine Sharp has a stake in Fallon's future, too. That's because the gangland enforcer is part of her past. He moved in the same dangerous shadows that her mysterious father lived and died in. And the strange bond Fallon had with her mother is something no one in Sharp's family ever dares to discuss. As McLeod battles her demons and Sharp chases her ghosts, these two very different detectives will ultimately confront the secrets that have entangled both of their fates-by descending into the Glasgow underworld where vengeance spans generations and everyone has a score to settle.