An old flame, former police officer Glen Withers, is back in Cliff Hardy's life - but it's strictly business as Glen is now also a private investigator, with a wealthy family for a client. She and Hardy join forces to take on the case of Rodney St John Harkness, a recovering alcoholic with a murky past.Hardy's digging into Harkness's past becomes urgent when Rodney and Glen disappear, and the trail leads to the beaches of the Central Coast. The plot tangles and the danger grows as Hardy tries to stay one step ahead of some desperate players.

Cliff Hardy goes to Leichhardt gym proprietor Wesley Scott for a 'fitness assessment' and is soon trying to get his son Clinton - known as The Black Prince - back on the rails. A sports star in the making and destined for the top, Clinton is obsessed with tracking down the dealer who sold his girlfriend the steroids that led to her death.Hardy has to find Clinton before he ends up on a murder charge - the trail leads him up to North Queensland and into the shadowy world of illegal boxing.

The life of a private investigator is seldom plain sailing, and it certainly doesn't help when someone unknown is trying to cancel your licence. Cliff Hardy needs to find out why, and he also needs to get to the bottom of the case of missing schoolteacher Brian Madden.Finding answers to both questions takes all Hardy's resourcefulness and contacts - police, underworld and press. Dangers - and bodies - appear all over Sydney and Hardy is lucky to keep both his life and his licence.

Divorce cases are part of a private investigator's bread and butter, and Cliff Hardy has had his share. This case, though, has a lot more than matrimonial squabbles - add in some perjury, fraud and murder to the mix. Crooked cops, lawyers and a call girl complete the collection, all making for a tough, and dangerous, puzzle for Hardy to try to solve while keeping his private investigator's licence, and his skin, intact.