Jack Lilburne has spent a long and distinguished career in the Prison Service, highly thought of as the just and humane Governor of Conyhall Young Offenders' Institution. But not everyone believes he deserves the honour and respect universally given to him. Someone believes he deserves to die a violent death.
At least one of the young criminals who had been under his care has sworn vengeance for his imprisonment. But as Gil Mayo, in his new role as detective superintendent, discovers, there are others who cannot be ruled out..
In what turns out to be a double murder investigation, he is confronted with elements of Lilburne's past and present—with members of a local protest group, for instance, and two women with a shared past and secrets best left hidden. And where does Marc fit in, the young man with a need to reconstruct his life and an obsessive love for Flora, Lilburne's beautiful daughter...?
