The naked body of a young woman is found hanging from a tree on a London roadside. Scrawled across her back are the words "DIRTY GIRL."

Detective Stella Mooney is faced with a murder as baffling as it is chilling. With no means to identify the victim and no apparent motive, the case is blocked, until a man is found on a bench by the river, his throat cut back to the vertebrae. And, as before, the killer has left a trademark comment: "FILTHY COWARD."

Stella and her team can see there's a connection--but what? One victim is a young girl, maybe one of the hookers who work the Strip; the other, a researcher for a prominent and controversial member of Parliament. More evidence is needed. And soon enough it comes: another death; another message....