Grace den Herder leaves an unhappy childhood and a promising career as a lawyer behind and decides to take on the toughest of challenges: joining the Royal Ulster Constabulary, which is still involved in the fight against terrorist organisations in Northern Ireland, where her performance and dedication leads to a spectacular rise through the ranks of Special Branch. Her work brings professional success but difficulty in forming relationships outside the world of counter-terrorist operations.
She runs an informant whose information leads to an operation that goes badly wrong, with a death in police custody and the subsequent murder of the informant, who is uncovered and killed by his organisation. In the aftermath, den Herder makes a decision to give evidence against a colleague and is abandoned by her force and her married lover as a result.
She leaves Northern Ireland and rebuilds her career as a detective in the newly formed Major Crime Team in Lothian and Borders. The team finds initial success investigating a brutal home invasion gang who have killed during a robbery. At the same time, brutal attacks on street prostitutes escalate into a series of murders and one of the main suspects is a high profile Edinburgh lawyer.
He is eventually arrested and convicted, although den Herder is uneasy about the result. When another prostitute is murdered most believe it to be a copycat crime, but Den Herder decides to reinvestigate. The revelations and subsequent chaos that result tear the Major Crime Team apart.
Noble Cause is the first in the trilogy about Grace den Herder. The second story, The Shortest Days of the Year and will be published in the spring. The third story, ‘Red Sky in the Morning’, will be published later in 2014.
She runs an informant whose information leads to an operation that goes badly wrong, with a death in police custody and the subsequent murder of the informant, who is uncovered and killed by his organisation. In the aftermath, den Herder makes a decision to give evidence against a colleague and is abandoned by her force and her married lover as a result.
She leaves Northern Ireland and rebuilds her career as a detective in the newly formed Major Crime Team in Lothian and Borders. The team finds initial success investigating a brutal home invasion gang who have killed during a robbery. At the same time, brutal attacks on street prostitutes escalate into a series of murders and one of the main suspects is a high profile Edinburgh lawyer.
He is eventually arrested and convicted, although den Herder is uneasy about the result. When another prostitute is murdered most believe it to be a copycat crime, but Den Herder decides to reinvestigate. The revelations and subsequent chaos that result tear the Major Crime Team apart.
Noble Cause is the first in the trilogy about Grace den Herder. The second story, The Shortest Days of the Year and will be published in the spring. The third story, ‘Red Sky in the Morning’, will be published later in 2014.
