Detective Constable Michael Collins and his partner Detective Constable Clive Clark are convinced by the best "ladder monkey" Clark has ever met that there is an arsonist at work in Birmingham. Soon Collins and Clark are fighting for their lives against a psychopathic killer who enjoys destroying buildings for financial gain - and young women for pleasure. While Collins and Clark pursue their quarry, Agnes Winter, Collins' Quaker landlady, finds her MI5 record returning to haunt her. Asked to meet a senior KGB agent she knew in 1945, she finds the Cold War is becoming red-hot. The summer temperature in Birmingham is already high, but up against the deadly arsonist and the KGB, Agnes, Collins and Clark are all in danger of ending up on slabs in a cold mortuary. Contains strong language and descriptions of violence and sexual acts.