When a four-year-old child is abducted from an Essex kindergarten, Detective Inspector Dog Cicero soon realizes that this is no routine investigation.

Something about the child's mother troubles him. Maybe it's the fact that she comes from Derry, and Cicero's Northern Ireland scars go deeper than his ruined face. But he can't help feeling there's more to it than that. Soon Cicero finds the odds are stacked against him both personally and professionally – not that he will let that stop him. For he's a gambling man, and when death's the only game in town, a gambling man has got to play.