Roxanna Fuentecilla is a businesswoman who appears to be involved in Ecuadorian money laundering, and the cops are keeping a close eye on her. DI Alex Morrow is called in when she disappears. Her children made an anonymous call to the police to report their mother missing, which infuriates Robin Walker, her live-in boyfriend.

To begin their operation, Morrow and her partner, DC Howard McGrain, put on a sting operation posing as regular Missing Persons officers in order to snoop around. Morrow knows that before she disappeared, Roxanna made a call from her cell phone, which the police are able to trace to a farm near posh Helensburgh.

Before this assignment, Morrow and McGrain were scheduled to fly to London to investigate Maria Pinzón Arias (a high-flying friend of Roxanna) and her husband, Juan, a Colombian attaché. None of these people have a clean record, according to the Glasgow police.

"Author Denise Mina writes with a sharp eye on the interchanges between the characters she creates. Even the police have bad feelings toward each other as the story moves along."

While all of this is going on, a woman's body is found on the shore of Loch Lomond, but it’s not Roxanna. Morrow realizes that the fancy community is fabricated only on a heady reputation and façade. As the narrative unfolds, many characters appear, one of whom is Iain Fraser. Newly released from prison, Iain (a “Passman”) kills a woman on the orders of a crime boss. This kind of murder for hire is at the center of BLOOD, SALT, WATER.

"Passman: a prisoner trusted to dole out cleaning products and pens. The passman was halfway between screws and prisoners. They were the moral compromise that kept the whole system working, the vilified keepers of order. Everyone felt superior to them, Iain knew that, but everyone colluded in the compromise because everyone wanted something."

Another character who plays a strange role is Susan Grierson, a counselor when Iain was in school. She has since moved back to her family mansion, which has gone unattended for about 20 years. Nevertheless, when Iain catches up with her in a field, she invites him in for tea. He is very confused but balanced enough to know that the inside of the house has had no care at all. "Iain couldn't fathom what was going on. He wanted a smoke and...then he would leave." But, of course, things don't turn out the way he wants. Characters find themselves in predicaments like this throughout the novel, which is full of interesting phrases: "like the entrance to a high security prison in Brigadoon."

Author Denise Mina writes with a sharp eye on the interchanges between the characters she creates. Even the police have bad feelings toward each other as the story moves along. "That the murderer we meet on the first page turns out to be one of the few characters the reader feels sympathy for is testament to how brilliantly intricate and psychologically complex [Mina's] books are," wrote one critic. I wholeheartedly agree and cannot wait for Mina’s next thrilling effort.