Veteran Customs investigator Frank McBride has been targeting gangs of drugs smugglers for decades. Taking out John Pyke’s team of Lincoln-based criminals is just another operation until suddenly things become interesting.

Why has Pyke’s team suddenly become so professional? How has it become so adept at evading surveillance? And who is the mysterious figure who is pulling the strings? McBride relishes having found a worthy opponent. But who is he? And what game is he playing?

Michael Butcher wants to know why his grandfather, a retired brigadier living in a tiny Rutland village, has decided to become an international trafficker in narcotics. And how has he allowed himself to get caught up in an elaborate game where the stakes are life in prison?

McBride and The Brigadier become enmeshed in a private duel but only one of them knows the rules of the game.

Rutland 1998, when George Bowman, the publican of Leighton Parva’s Old Volunteer Inn is found dead at the bottom of his cellar steps the police dismiss it as a tragic accident but Frank McBride and Bernard Taylor aren’t so sure.

Teaming up with their neighbour, Ron Godsmark, their suspicions centre on Joachim and Hannah Keller, the Swiss couple who manage Leighton Hall, the wedding venue just outside the village.

Bernard sends his granddaughter, Emma, on an undercover mission to work at the hall as a waitress. Together they stumble upon a web of intrigue involving fraud, smuggling and murder.

Frank believes that he can persuade his old colleagues in Customs and Excise to investigate but Bernard has something else entirely in mind.

Fraud requires justice. Murder requires revenge.