An audio book
Grace Scott and Mac arrive back at their Edinburgh flat after their honeymoon to discover a dead body in their kitchen. The back door had been broken. Maybe he'd been after the wedding presents. The police can't identify him. Mr Singh has a shop below. In a little aside - his PoV - we learn that he knew about the body. Later we learn that someone's in his stock room out of hours.
3 months later Grace (a photographer - her father has recently died) finds a message - "Lucian Graball - I am not that man". Asking around, she finds the name in a homeless hostel's register. The associated phone number is a London address. She's interested in finding the man's family because it would help her with her own loss. She goes to London. She finds a foreign couple at the address - a suitmaker and a woman who's glad he's dead. She talks to a man working in a cafe opposite who said that Lucian was a nice guy who'd come from Amsterdam to look for his wife Ana and child. She dashes to Amsterdam. Ewen (known from an MA course she did, a journalist) gives her a contact address - Niku, a famous investigative photographer. He knows someone who lived in Romania close to where Lucian came from. He was a State assassin, son of a feared State assassin. Are there 2 Lucians? Niku's houseboat is set alight. Clues lead to Paris and a 3rd identity - Francois Bouchet, so off Niku and Grace go. Mac is furious. There's always been tension between Mac and Grace about independence and careers. Ewen finds a place for them to stay opposite a cafe owned by the suspect family. Niku has a theory about a crime family falling out with each other. Niku's attacked - it's made to look like a mugging. Grace is made aware that she's being watched. They change hotels, ending up sleeping in the same room for safety. They have to flee again, gate-crashing a rave in a cavern. In the end they sleep together.
Meanwhile in Edinburgh a body of an Australian, Pierce, months old, is found with another body. Cilla, a reporter, is investigating. Pierce was a university lecturer who was born in Edinburgh. Cilla visits his mother. The other body was Colin McFarley's - a drug dealer whose mother lives in a surprisingly expensive house. There seems no connection. Cilla visits her mother too. They realise that what the 2 men have in common is that both their mothers were ripped off in property deals.
Mac sees a man living in Singh's storeroom and tries to make friends.
She goes to Copenhagen in search of Ana. She finds her an hour South of Edinburgh, in hiding and with a baby - Julian's. She'd run away from him because of his thug friends (he'd tried to escape from them too) but had just started meeting him again. He'd reformed and had been working as a painter in one of Mac's projects. Mac's boss is the man behind the property deals. Julian, when drunk, had revealed his past, which is why Mac had been phoning Grace to make her come back. He knew that his boss had got Julian to kill the 2 men using Julian's modus operandi, then got Julian killed. Mac is killed too.
The man in Singh's storeroom was a troubled, innocent soul who Singh was trying to help. At the end Grace leaves for Europe planning to meet Niku again.
The language is ok, lyrism (e.g. "evening sun gathered in golden puddles") mixing with action. I like the general plot, though people might not like the amount of luck involved in following clues.
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