Kipp Brown, successful businessman and compulsive gambler, is having the worst run of luck and is beginning to lose big style. Taking his teenage son, Mungo, to a football match should have given him a welcome respite, if only for a few hours. But it’s at the stadium where his nightmare begins.

Within minutes of arriving at the game the boy suddenly disappears and Kipp gets a terrifying message that someone has his child, and to get him back alive, Kipp will have to pay.

Roy Grace is brought in to investigate what seems to be a straightforward case of kidnap. But rapidly Grace finds himself entering a dark, criminal underbelly of the city, where the rules are different and nothing is what it seems . . .