"The woman's cries floated down the passage and bubbled out through the front door in helpless, anguished, tortured spasms. For Ryder it was a sound that echoed down the ages. The horror of mothers from any species that might ever have lived on the planet: a parent trying to deal with the impossible. The death of her young ones: it was a sound to chill the blood." After three months in prison a notorious killer escapes. Detectives Jeremy Ryder and Navi Pillay are on his tail for the final showdown. The fourth volume of The Ryder Quartet contains heart-rending scenes as readers discover the kinds of trauma faced every day by victims of crime. These scenes take place against a tapestry of courage and heroism in the daily clashes between the forces of law and order on the one hand and brutal drug-fuelled crime on the other.