Blood at the root
(Book)

When the body of young Jason Fox is found stomped to death after pub closing hours, it looks like an open-and-shut case of a drunken brawl turned deadly. The victim had made racial slurs toward three youths in the pub, and since the three resist questioning, Eastvale's Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks and his colleague, Detective Constable Susan Gay, have no choice but to have them locked up. But they're out in no time, and Banks faces a furious Chief Constable Riddle who accuses him of laying the timber for a racial conflagration and demands that Banks leave the legwork to his underlings and run the investigation from his desk without further incident - or find himself on traffic duty.