"Call me boss. Call me Guv. Call me anything but ma'am." - Detective Superintendent Jane Tennison

Tennison finds the price of her outspokenness in the force is reassignment up North to Manchester. Alone at a new station, with new politics and a new crew not of her choosing, after 22 years on the force, Tennison's career has hit rock bottom - and it's about to get worse. A notorious drug dealer has been shot dead in the projects, his partner, Michael Johns, severely wounded, capable of describing the killer but unwilling to talk. The murder victim and Johns both worked for Britain's own "Teflon Don," a razor-sharp gangster known as "The Street." The road to justice they are about to take will require quick thinking and sure judgment. But the North plays by different rules from the South, and it's hard for Tennison to tell her friends from her enemies. As the killings mount, and with a grave suspicion that information is being leaked from within, Tennison is about to discover just how dangerous it is to cross The Street.