1961. In the drawing room of an imposing Hong Kong residence, a British lord brutally assaults a young Chinese boy. His grandson watches, helpless. But he will never forget.

Wapping, London, present day. It's a warm spring in the capital, and heroin addict Catherine Berlin feels the clammy breath of the past on her neck. Battling to stay clean, and bearing the scars of her most recent case, she is struggling to outpace her demons.

An old contact has offered her a job investigating a violent attack by a seventeen-year-old public schoolboy, a Chinese orphan on a prestigious scholarship. The victim has gone missing, and the boy's patron, a shadowy peer, claims the case is being manipulated by the Chinese government. Seduced by the boy's vulnerability and the peer's allegations, Berlin journeys to Hong Kong, where she uncovers a conspiracy that reaches from the Pearl River Delta to the Palace of Westminster...

House of Bones is the fourth...