When a body is found after a flood, the secrets of a tempestuous life surface with it. Deputy Chief Constable Bob Skinner has kept the existence of his hated brother Michael hidden for years. As he relives their past conflict, other demons threaten his future. For not only are his professional enemies circling, but Sarah, his wife, seems set on a course for calamity. Can Skinner surmount the greatest challenges of his life... and if he does, will he ever be the same? Meanwhile, in an Edinburgh art gallery, his team confront a shocking and very public case of arson. Was it a political protest, or something much deeper? ""Bob Skinner's wife, brother, and heart all fail him, but not his Scots gall." The heat is on for Bob Skinner, Scotland’s most revered and, in some circles, most feared cop. His career hangs by a thread, as a recent illness gives his enemies a weapon to use against him. A body found in the detritus of a flood is identified as the hated brother whose existence Skinner has kept hidden for years. On the crime front, an incendiary device destroys a valuable painting in Edinburgh’s Royal Scottish Academy. As Skinner and his team tackle these crises, his wife Sarah—left in America, with their children, to recover from the tragic death of her parents—finds comfort with an old college lover. When fate leaves her staring at a seemingly inevitable murder conviction, Skinner will need all his fearsome resources to sort out the tangled mess of his life. But is he still up to the challenge? Lightning–paced and emotionally gripping, Fallen Gods is Quintin Jardine’s breakthrough novel. Quintin Jardine was born once upon a time in the West - of Scotland rather than America, but still he grew to manhood as a massive Sergio Leone fan. On the way there he was educated, against his will, in Glasgow, where he ditched a token attempt to study law for more interesting careers in journalism, government propaganda, and political spin-doctoring. After a close call with the Brighton Bomb in 1984, he moved into the even riskier world of media relations consultancy, before realising that all along he had been training to become a crime writer. Now, forty novels later, he never looks back. Along the way he has created/acquired an extended family in Scotland and Spain. Everything he does is for them. He can be tracked down through his blog: http://quintinjardine.me