History graduate Mark Pirelli needs a change of scene. But he finds it changing faster than he can cope with from the moment he's left alone in a London apartment with an unidentified dead body. After calling in an old university friend to help him out, Pirelli finds himself lurching from crisis to crisis as their search for truth takes them from Nottingham to the far reaches of Eastern Europe. Both in a crowded ice-hockey stadium and in a back-street bar, a desperate fate awaits...