The Dead Sit Round In A Ring

Jimmy Stone died of a broken heart. Literally - someone put a sharp object between his ribs and pushed, hard. He was found sitting in a circle with three other corpses in the living room of a Notting Hill flat.

Notting Hill - where million-pound houses are just the other side of the tracks from sink estates, where yuppies rub shoulders with hookers, dealers and gangsters - is DS Stella Mooney's patch, so it's up to her to discover who broke this heart of Stone's.

But it's a tough case and she feels like she's going round in circles. In fact circles - circles and rings - are all over this one: vice rings running girls from Eastern Europe; Internet rings peddling vile murderabilia; the tight family circles of organised crime . . .

Then, when her private life gets caught up in the quest to find Stone's murderer, Mooney gets the chance to crack the whole thing wide open. But what will the cost be to her - and to those she loves . . .?