With his wife, the acclaimed actress Stella Pinero, away on a movie shoot in Scotland, Chief Commander John Coffin is at a bit of a loose end with just the cat and dog for company. But one morning, as he checks through the mail for his wife, he gets a rather unpleasant surprise: Horrific pictures of badly abused children sent anonymously to Stella. Rather than worry his wife, he vows to track down the culprit and calls in a trusted colleague, DCI Phoebe Astley, to assist him in his inquiries.

London's Second City is shaken by a terrorist's bomb and a woman's body is found in a damaged building. The face is unrecognizable, the fingertips have been removed, but the handbag by the corpse appears to belong to Stella Pinero, the wife of John Coffin, Chief Commander of the Second City Police.

Detective John Coffin must find out who killed the man belonging to the severed human head found in an urn on the church steps.

Student Amy Dean has disappeared with her boyfriend Martin - a year after Martin's former girlfriend Virginia was found beaten to death. The connection between the two incidents seems clear - but John Coffin, Commander of the police, discovers that both girls worked at Star Court House.

Seton was a detective doing undercover work on the sale of illegal pharmaceuticals. No one, including John Coffin, Commander of London's Second City, knows what the note means, but it appears that Seton was secretly investigating internal police corruption.