The price of darkness - Graham Hurley

D/C Winter has gone undercover in an attempt to infiltrate the inner circle of the city's premier drug's lord Bazza McKenzie. Isolated from his colleagues, resenting the way his superiors have presented him the job as a fait accompli and abroad in a world where money is easy and respect is earned in brutally straightforward ways, DC Winter is in his element. Worryingly so. . .

Concerns amongst his superiors that Winter may finally have had too much temptation put in his path are soon supplanted by two vicious murders. First a high-profile local property developer is shot, with clinical efficiency, in his own bed. A few days later a government minister, on a visit to the city, is assassinated by two helmeted motorcyclists while his car is stuck in a traffic jam. A fevered investigation begins with Winter's erstwhile boss, D/I Faraday, in charge. With clues hard to come by, the government panicking and the anti-terrorist branch circling Faraday is shoved off the case and left in charge just of the investigation into the property developer's murder.

With more time on his hands Faraday is also tasked with keeping track of Winter and he soon discovers that Winter, the arch-conspirator, has been set up.

As Winter begins to realize what his bosses had in mind for him and Faraday begins to put together the pieces of a heartbreaking story of personal and political betrayal that may well link the two murders, THE PRICE OF DARKNESS becomes a study of the desperate measures some people take when their friends and their society let them down.