Cameron McGill is a leather-clad, motorbike-riding dyke with a troubled past, an inability to hold down a relationship and an unfortunate habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

As the only witness to a vicious knife attack, Cameron also finds herself the number one suspect and only reluctantly let out on police bail.

Fighting to clear her name, and to pass on a message from the victim to the mysterious Joanna - a vital piece of information Cameron withheld from the police - she becomes involved in the darkly secretive world of an animal research laboratory and with the group of militant protestors who want the premises shut down.

"Her condition was still critical when I left the police station. She could easily die. They'd be straight on to me if she did … Then I'd be on a murder rap."

The more information she uncovers, and the closer she comes to finding Joanna, Cameron gets caught between two opposing factions. They are each prepared to kill for the message that she is not going to give to anyone but Joanna. And maybe not even to her.

Cameron is an appealing, if at times exasperating, character. The slow revelation of her past is handled well - each time something new about her background becomes clear, her actions and responses become more understandable.

Although at times it seems there are too many threads in this very readable and well-paced plot, but Jenny Roberts pulls them together neatly.