Glasgow December, all freezing rains and sleet that bites like schools of piranha. In this city of icy pavements and Christmas street decorations battered by arctic winds, the body of a well-dressed man is found hanging from the girders of a railway bridge.

Investigating the case is Lou Perlman, a detective whose idea of a good suit is anything that fits him. Perlman feels that this is no suicide, and that something about the corpse reminds him of his boyhood in the Gorbals. For Perlman is a man with secrets of his own and, as one death follows another, the hunt for the killer takes him into a territory of deceit and greed - a world of old allegiances that are lethal to reawaken.