Detective Chief Inspector Harriet Martens is nicknamed the Hard Detective for her tough stance. So no one, least of all Harriet , expected her to fall - dangerously - in love while investigating the murder of a tennis star . . .

It was six-thirty in the morning when DCI Harriet Martens took a phone call that would change her life . . . For the call is to inform her that Britain's number one tennis star, the beautiful Bubbles Xingara, has been murdered in the grounds of her luxurious house. Harriet is now in charge of a case that will have the world's media - already massing for the start of Wimbledon - out in force. But it is not the investigation that is about to explode Harriet's life. Or the string of murder suspects - including Bubbles' stepfather and coach Peter Renshaw, her assistant Fiona Diplock, or even the French gangster, Pierre le Fou, who had been stalking her. No, it is the handsome figure of Detective Inspector Anselm Brent. For Harriet Martens - wife and mother, nicknamed the Hard Detective by the press and her colleagues - has fallen madly and passionately in love with a fellow officer . . .