Cold Courage

'Panic spread through the street, rippling in a viral wave of contorted faces and anxious gestures...The moment before the catastrophe. This is what it looks like...' When Lia witnesses a disturbing scene on the way to work, she, like the rest of the City of London, is captivated and horrified. As details unfurl in the media the brutal truth emerges - a Latvian prostitute has been killed, her body run over by a steamroller and then placed in the trunk of a car to be found. As the weeks pass and no leads are found, the news story dies but Lia finds herself unable to forget. When she meets Mari, another Finn living in London, she thinks it fortuitous, but Mari has engineered the meeting for her own advantage. There is much more to Mari than meets the eye: she possesses an unnatural way of being able to 'read' people, see into their innermost thoughts and pre-empt their actions. Mari heads up a unit she calls the 'Studio' - a group she employs made up of four disparate people: a hacker, a set designer, a private detective and an actress. They are loyal to Mari, and she has bound them to her by granting them life-changing favours. Mari and Lia strike up a firm friendship and when Lia shares her plaguing thoughts about the murder, Mari thinks she and the members of the Studio can help where the police have failed. But Mari and Lia are about to set foot into extremely dangerous territory, especially as Mari is not above using the Studio to unscrupulous ends. Cold Blood. Cold Case. Cold Courage.