Two people are hiring out their services in Castlemere - a prostitute with only hours to live, and a hired assassin with only hours to make his kill . . . When the naked body of a young prostitute is found on a narrowboat on the Castlemere Canal, police enquiries focus on the nearby Barbican Hotel. For with a sales conference in progress there's no shortage of men who could have met the girl there. But soon Superintendent Shapiro and his team have a great deal more to contend with. For the dead woman was not the only person to have hired herself out that night: a paid assassin is at large - and he is gunning for the conference organizer Philip Kendall. Jo Bannister's Castlemere novels are tough and very realistic - in the tradition of Lynda La Plante's Prime Suspect.