Anna Travis is back in a new gripping mystery from Lynda La Plante, featuring the female detective every bit as intelligent, ambitious, and flawed as Prime Suspect's Jane Tennison.

Ruthless drug trafficker Alexander Fitzpatrick is one of the most wanted men in the Western Hemisphere. But for ten years, there's been no sign of him. Is he dead, or just trying to appear that way? When an ex-colleague from the murder squad is found shot in a dank drug den, Anna Travis is pulled into the case. She's grateful for the distraction after her breakup with DCI Langton and soon finds herself involved with someone new. But as the bodies pile up and the mystery deepens, Travis and Langton must put aside their personal history and work together to track down one of the canniest criminals they've ever encountered.

At the start of La Plante's excellent fourth crime drama to feature London Det. Insp. Anna Travis (after 2008's Clean Cut), wanted drug kingpin Alexander Fitzpatrick returns home to England after plastic surgery in Mexico, desperate to collect funds that Julia Kendal, his recently married ex-partner in the drug smuggling business, has squirreled away. When Julia's new husband, a former cop who was also acting as her bodyguard, is shot to death at a seedy Chalk Farm drug squat, Anna discovers an unexpected link between Julia and Anthony Collingwood, a Fitzpatrick alias. More bodies of Fitzpatrick's former associates pile up, including some poisoned with an overdose of Fentanyl, an illegal opiate with which Fitzpatrick plans to flood the U.K. market. Supt. Jimmy Langton, Anna's tetchy ex-lover and former superior, who's dismayed to notice she's dangerously attracted to a professor connected to the elusive Fitzpatrick, retains his enigmatic appeal. (July)