When a would-be heiress uncovers a murdered body rather than her hidden inheritance in a Highland peat bog, DCI Pirie unravels a case where nothing is what it seems.

"It's only January, and the year has already brought blizzards, strikes, power cuts, and political unrest. But for journalist Allie Burns, bad news provides an opportunity to escape the "women's stories" to which her editors confine her. Striking up an alliance with wannabe investigative journalist Danny Sullivan, she begins covering international tax fraud, then gets wind of a group of Scottish ultranationalists aiming to cause mayhem ahead of the...

"Cold case detective Karen Pirie ... finds herself investigating the shadowy world of forgery, where things are never what they seem ... When a lobster fisherman on an early morning run pulls in his traps, he finds something he wasn't expecting to catch--a body. Turns out the dead man was the brother of a senior Scottish government official who vanished without a trace, and Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie is asked to take over the investigation....