Once the haunt of Jack the Ripper, London's East End is a vibrant mix of history and the avant-garde, where elegant Georgian town houses exist side by side with colorful street markets and the hippest clubs. But here races and cultures still clash, and the trendy galleries and glamorous nightlife disguise a violent and seedy underside.

Sandra Gilles, a young mother, leaves her daughter with a friend and then disappears on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in May. Shortly thereafter, her husband, a Pakistani lawyer, is killed. Scotland Yard detective Gemma James happens upon the scene—and soon she and Duncan Kincaid, her life partner and colleague, are on the trail of a murderer. But the investigation grows darker and more dangerous at every turned corner, and the true prize must be protected at all costs: a beautiful, orphaned little girl, not yet three, whose life now hangs in the balance.