Prospect of Death

Detective Inspector James Carrick has cost Joanna Mackenzie a fulfilling career with the Bath Police Department. Yet when he is found unconscious at the wheel of his crashed car on Burns Night, a riotous Scottish holiday celebrating poet Robbie Burns's birthday, and looks to be charged with drunk driving – a charge that will destroy his career – Joanna cannot just leave her lover to his fate. Now a private detective, Joanna employs all her resources to help Carrick regain his memory and determine why he even got into his car that fateful night. After all, he had planned to spend the night at the Crawford Hotel where the Burns Night celebration was taking place. In the course of their investigation, Joanna and Carrick meet Patrick Gillard, an ex-M15 agent bored with his vacation and more than happy to involve himself, not only in the Burns Night investigation, but also in that of the next day's murder of a local TV producer, Marvin Gilcrist. Gilcrist, an inveterate womanizer, loved to dabble in controversy, and his hard-hitting films were bound to have made him enemies. But does his murder have any connection to Carrick's mysterious car accident? It is up to Joanna, with a little help from Gillard and Carrick himself, to untangle what rapidly becomes a very complex web indeed.