Young detective Nicholas Troy is basically a good man, for whom homicide investigations are the highest form of police work. But when a woman falls from the construction site for the world's tallest skyscraper, the tortured course of the murder investigation that follows threatens to destroy his vocation.
Hampered by incompetent colleagues and organisational politics, Troy fights his way through worlds of wealth and poverty, people-smuggling and prostitution. He has always seen Sydney as a city of sharks, a place where predators lurk beneath the glittering surface. Now he uncovers networks of crime and corruption that entangle the city, reaching into the police force itself.