Portsmouth is a city on the ropes, a poor, dirty but spirited city, with a soaring crime rate. And it is home for DI Joe Faraday. Faraday has made it in the CID through diligence, an unswerving commitment to principle and an uncanny knack for gauging character. Slow to make friends, a widower bringing up his profoundly deaf son, Faraday pushes himself hard and expects the same from his colleagues. Stories abound of the quiet DI's sudden, volcanic outbursts of fury directed at inferiors and superiors alike who haven't matched his own exacting standards. An enigma to those he works with, Faraday's refuge from the desperate business of policing his hometown is his passion for the natural world and the bird life that teems on the beaches and estuaries of the South coast. And now the sinking of one of the yachts in the Fastnet race is beginning to look like the perfect cover for a murder that cuts to the core of Portsmouth's money set. But only Joe Faraday believes it happened.