Willing Flesh

Christmas is coming and D. I. Staffe is trying to make a go of it with his on-off girlfriend, Sylvie, when a murdered woman is discovered in a swanky City hotel room - she is Elena Danya, a blonde and beguiling high-end prostitute.

As Staffe becomes obsessed with Danya, a friend of hers, an altogether more down-at-heel working girl, is found dead and their mutual aristocratic friend and bad-girl, Arabella, goes missing.

The evidence begins to point to a voyeuristic predator, Graham Blears, but Staffe is not convinced and is increasingly drawn away from the city and towards the roots of a tangled ménage involving a City banker, a Russian oligarch and a Turkish playboy, forcing himself down into the higher echelons of the British establishment, whose barricades begin to stonewall the investigation.

When his Chief, Pennington, cuts him loose, Staffe becomes the hunted instead of the hunter, with grave consequences for the women who are close to him.

Adam Creed brings to The Willing Flesh the same gritty urban authenticity he brought to his thrilling debut Suffer the Children .