A death no one should suffer and an investigator who won't give up-for fans of John Burdett, Ian Rankin, and Michael Connelly.

Early morning in Jalan Alor, one of the city's red-light and tourist hotspots controlled by the Triads. A junkie's scream of horror and the commotion that follows brings down the police, first a patrol car, and then, after what the officers see, Inspector Mislan and Detective Sergeant Johan from Special Investigations. The body in the duffle bag had been dumped in a back alley. The junkie who found the bag thought he'd hit the jackpot. The rats probably thought the same. But it was acid that took the young woman's face and burned the flesh on her fingers, and something unknown caused the marks on her skin of what appears to be torture.

With no papers, no fingerprints, no face, and a body removed from the original crime scene, Mislan must build his case and find who committed this atrocity. The woman's body seems to have been a message. But by whom? For whom?

This unsettling case will take Inspector Mislan and his team from Kuala Lumpur to the Land of Smiles, and from a dark alley to the dark web and a place where humans are made soulless.