Enredo

The Met's new Special Investigations Squad boss asks Gently to investigate high levels of corruption within the force.

The Old Bailey, London, 1970. Gently is bowing out of the force on a professional high when he is approached by a covert anti-corruption police unit with one last tantalizing job: the cold case of a young girl murdered four years ago in new town Washington, County Durham. The investigation finds Gently tracking MP Michael Clements, a charismatic politician who fearlessly pursues political reform in the North, promotes ever-closer links to Europe, and who is tipped to be a future Labour Prime Minister. When the investigation leads to a murky web of union and political intrigue, placing Bacchus and Rachel in danger, will Gently do the unthinkable and bend the course of justice? How can Bacchus and Gently repair their frosty relationship - and faced with mortal danger, how will Gently and his team survive?

The Metropolitan Police's new Special Investigations Squad boss Lister brings fellow police corruption fighter Gently, weeks before his retirement, back north to investigate a teen girl's high level cover-up according to an anonymous tip. She was employed by Donnelly's construction firm in Washington, a new town in Durham county, which is to execute a major infrastructure project promoted by politically clean Labour MP Michael Clements, a charismatic womanizer, suspected of getting her pregnant and maybe killed. The victim of the murder of a man at a picket line, which John Bacchus and Rachel Coles are investigating, turns out an undercover reporter at that same firm. It becomes evident in both cases that political games are played at top stakes, involving dirty cop DI Harry Malachi, and physically dangerous, while a cruel twist in his wife's murder shakes Gently's resolve never to stray from the evidence.—KGF Vissers