Superintendent Gregory Summers is co-operating with the National Crime Squad on Operation Cuckoo, intended to crack down on illegal immigrants. The Thames Valley is a prime target for modern day slave traders, who make the unfortunate slave pay their own fare to the promised land.Meanwhile, Antony Lucas tracks down wealthy widow Elise Weissman, the mother who gave him up for adoption thirty years ago. He is cautiously welcomed into the family, despite the initial hostility of his half-sister, Cressida, who has always believed herself an only child.What the Weissmans don't know is that Antony was badly abused by his adoptive parents, a trauma that has left him incapable of human affection and looking not for reconciliation but revenge. And what Antony doesn't know is that Elise is not the genteel, middle-class lady that she appears. Her background is more colourful and she will not sit quietly by and let him destroy all that she has built up. A spiral of violence and devastation ensues, violence that must end in death for one member of the family. But whose motive was strongest? And where does the sudden death of an elderly man in his luxury hotel room fit into the picture?
