It seems like a routine post-mortem, when Professor Max Fosse and DS Charles Seymour are presented with a mysterious road accident fatality in central Lancashire. The victim has unusual physical characteristics, including a missing rib, an unknown blood group and evidence of extensive genetic engineering. He is identified as a radicalised British terrorist and linked to the suspicious death of a government scientist in the Lake District. The trail of the ongoing investigation leads to Saudi Arabia, the Punjab, war zones in Somalia and Bosnia, and back to the Spanish Civil War, in an ever-unfolding paradox.