The hustle and bustle of the holiday season is in full swing in Newcastle. Detective Joe Ashworth and his daughter Jessie find themselves swept along in a raucous crowd and onto the Metro, but, when the train has to be stopped due to poor weather conditions, Jessie notices that one lady hasn't disembarked. Her name is Margaret Krukowski and she has been fatally stabbed.
Joe's gov'ner, Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope arrives on the scene to take charge of the case. She stands on the platform at the station and surveys the surroundings. She can feel in her bones that this is going to be a complex and unusual case. Truth be told, Vera is glad for the distraction from all of the holiday revelry.
A few days later, another woman from Margaret Krukowski's neighborhood is murdered and Vera knows that to solve both cases, she is going to have to figure out why Margaret was so worried in the weeks leading up to her death. She knows there is a link somewhere, but the residents of Harbour Street are reluctant to speak to the police. They are hell-bent on closing ranks to keep outsiders from intruding into their lives. Retracing Margaret's final movements may be the only way to piece together what deep dark secrets the neighbors on this street are keeping. At what point, though, do silent witnesses become complicit in the crime itself?
This riveting British police procedural uses sharp prose and an eye for forensic detail to tell the age old story of how keeping secrets can be deadly.
