EDINBURGH 2025: Global warming has turned the summer into the Big Heat in Edinburgh, an independent, virtually crime-free oasis surrounded by anarchic city states and run by the Council of City Guardians.In a city where television, private cars and cigarettes are banned, and electricity, food and sex are rationed, citizens live for the weekly lottery drawing while serving tourists in their year-round festival. Their reverie is broken when a recent lottery winner goes missing, and subversive, blues-haunted private investigator Quintilian Dalrymple is called in to investigate the disappearance. Soon after, a body is discovered in the Water of Leith - a bottle of contraband whisky the only clue left behind.The Council, increasingly fearful of losing its grip on power, expects Quint to stop the tormentors dead in the water. But he is having serious difficulty distinguishing friend from foe during the Big Heat. Meanwhile the body count, like the temperature, keeps on rising...