The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: Galbraith, Robert. Career of Evil. Sphere, 2015. Kindle Edition.

A courier on a motorcycle delivers a package to Strike’s assistant, Robin, at the beginning of the narrative. Thinking that the package contains favors for her wedding reception, Robin signs for it. However upon opening it, she discovers that the package contains the severed leg of a woman. A note is attached with the lyrics of a song that Strike recognizes because it is from Strike's deceased mother's favorite group. This, and the fact that the leg is severed at the same point that Strike's is severed, makes Strike realize that the perpetrator is someone with a vendetta against him.

Strike immediately thinks of four people who may have sent the leg: a gangster named Malley; a man who tortured his wife named Donald Laing; a pedophile named Noel Brockbank; and his deceased mother’s husband, Jeff Whitaker, who Strike still believes killed his mother even though he was acquitted of the charge. The leg itself is not the only strange thing Strike has received lately. Robin remembers some letters that she had dismissed as being from crazy people. One was from a girl asking Strike how to cut off her leg as she thought that Strike orchestrated his own amputation.

The police look for, and find, the body of the girl who the leg belongs to. It is the same girl who wrote Strike the letter and even though there are letters in the apartment that appear to be from Strike, the police quickly realize that someone is trying to frame him. In addition, as time goes on, it becomes obvious that Robin is the person that the killer wants to kill next.

Dismissing the other suspects that Strike provides, the police follow the notion that Malley is the killer. So, while working on their other cases, working through issues in their respective love lives and fighting their mutual attraction to each other, Strike and Robin work on the case. Strike finds the killer who turns out to be Donald Laing and Robin saves two children from the pedophile, Brockbank. The police later arrest Brockbank. By the end of the narrative, it becomes obvious that Strike and Robin have a lasting professional relationship and perhaps a personal one as well.