A "gripping, taut" (Guillermo del Toro) thriller featuring homicide detective John Luther, "who is intelligent and almost freakishly intuitive [and] belongs not only to the Sherlock Holmes tradition but also to the newer crime-fiction model elaborated by Thomas Harris in his novels Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal" (The New York Times).

Is Luther a force for good or a man hell-bent on self-destruction?

Meet Detective Chief Inspector John Luther. He's a homicide detective with an extraordinary case-clearance rate. He's obsessive, instinctive, and intense. Nobody who ever stood at his side has a bad word to say about him. And yet there are rumors that Luther is bad--not corrupt, but tormented. After years of chasing the most depraved criminals in London's gritty underworld, he seethes with a hidden fury he can barely control, making him do things any other detective wouldn't and shouldn't do.

A compulsively readable novel by the writer hailed by The Guardian as "Britain's own Stephen King," this is the story of the serial killer case that tore Luther's personal and professional relationships apart and propelled him over the precipice--beyond fury, beyond vengeance, all the way to the other side of the law.