In the wake of a series of assaults on the children who live in the grim Heights project (universally dubbed ""Wuthering Heights""), Bradfield Gazette reporter Laura Ackroyd is approached by the TV series Case Re-opened to poke around in a ten-year-old homicide: the murder of young Tracy Miller. Tracy's half-brother Stephen Webster has long since been arrested and convicted, but his mother swears he's innocent--railroaded, most likely, by Tracy's grief-maddened father, who testified against him. Yorkshire Chief Inspector Michael Thackeray, still fighting his lust for Laura, finds their paths crossing awkwardly when he's asked to look into Stephen's conviction too. Meanwhile, Sgt. Kevin Mower, working undercover with the community police to unmask the molester, gets tangled in his own love affair with passionate South African playground leader Sue Raban, who turns out to be the worst thing that could have happened to him. Before the curtain comes down on a second, equally nasty murder, there'll be death threats, muggings, fatal joyrides, an attack on Laura's grandmother, and a full-scale Heights riot. An equally unsparing sequel to Death by Election (1994) that's especially strong on a problem treated by too few mysteries: the need for the coppers to protect a community that wants nothing to do with them.