He had viewed his transfer to rural obscurity as a gentle step down towards retirement after a career fighting people-trafficking, syndicated narcotics and homicide. Complicit in his scheme was his new wife, whose varied passions included a natural yearning for the wild and rugged high-tops and the gentility of the lake shore in equal measure. How wrong could he have been? They found the English Lake District in turmoil, beset by an epidemic of wanton vandalism that had run unchecked for nearly a decade. The local economy was in free-fall, the famous landscape all but ruined, and in the unfettered chaos people were angry; livelihoods were crumbling, victims were agitating, and vigilante groups were adopting law enforcement responsibilities in the apparent absence of any higher authority. For clandestine crooks, such anarchy provided the perfect camouflage for their covert operations. However, when murder began to stalk the Cumbrian fells, DCI David Lehrer wondered why he had complained so bitterly about that London overspill which had plagued him for years, and from which he was trying to escape.