Inspector Malcolm Fox and his team from the Lothian and Borders Police department of “Complaints” (Professional Ethics and Standards), Tony Kaye and Joe Naysmith, are assigned to an investigation in the town of Kirkcaldy in Fife.

Detective Sergeant Paul Carter has been found guilty of misconduct, and Fox’s job is to reassure the Fife Constabulary that the other Kirkcaldy police are clean.

Fox and his team must dodge, while exploiting as sources, not only the hostile Kirkcaldy police but contingents of Fife headquarters CID, Murder Squad, and even an emissary from London’s Special Branch.

When Fox visited him, Alan Carter was investigating the suspicious 1985 death of an Edinburgh lawyer named Francis Vernal,[1] who was involved with Scottish Nationalist paramilitaries in the 1980s, including Dark Harvest, a terrorist group trying to use anthrax.

He interviews various former associates of Vernal, including his onetime law partner, his widow, a madman, a TV personality, and a Chief Constable who is herself trying to deal with a group of terrorists.