An independent city where television, private cars and popular music are banned, where the citizens are dedicated to the tourists attending the year-round Festival, and where crime is virtually non-existent, Edinburgh in 2020 has its drawbacks for blues-haunted private investigator Quintilian Dalrymple.
But the brutal killing of a guardswoman is enough to scare the Council of City Guardians out of complacency. It looks like the Ear, Nose and Throat Man has returned. And they are forced to turn to the man they demoted to uncover a conspiracy of violence and sexual intrigue that reaches into a dark heart of corruption and threatens to dismember the body politic.
©1997 Paul Johnston (P)2010 BBC Audiobooks Ltd