A skeleton is found up on the roof of a crumbling Gothic building in Edinburgh, with a bullet hole in its skull. Forensics suggest he died five to ten years ago and, judging by his dental work, came from the old Eastern bloc. For DCI Karen Pirie of the Historic Cases Unit, it is the start of a web of secrets that runs through the war-crimes tribunals and Oxford to a Croatian village still scarred by conflict. Val McDermid is at her most gripping here in a novel about the long reach of history and the cost of justice delayed.
