For years drugs barons Ralph Ember and Mansel Shale have run their crooked empires peacefully alongside each other, tolerated by Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles as a way of keeping violence off the streets. But are things changing? Karl Marx's bleak theory that all capitalists - including drugs tycoons - lust for monopoly seems to have kicked in. Do Ember and Shale each long for sole control of the trade and the profits? Ember fears that Shale now wants to kill him and take over his firm. Shale on the other hand is about to get remarried and - believing in keeping your enemies closer than your so-called friends - has asked Ember to be Best Man. Will Ember be appallingly exposed, standing there with Shale at the altar? Or will Shale? Ember wonders whether he should act first, to protect himself - already one of his people have been gunned down and nobody caught for it. Iles and Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur have picked up hints of this acutely dangerous shift in the Ember-Shale relationship and must urgently try to head off possible out-and-out carnage. Praise for Bill James: 'Essential reading' - "The Observer". 'For many years (James) has been writing some of the most potent crime fiction in Britain' - Marcel Berlins, "The Times". 'One of the kings of the darkhill' - Val McDermid. 'Most other British police writers are foam rubber truncheons to James' iron riot baton' - "Time Out". 'Deliciously unsavoury' - "Guardian". 'Another dodgy gavotte by the master of the revels...brilliant' - "Literary Review". 'Dazzles...a modern morality play of epic scope' - "Publishers Weekly".