During the miners' strike in the 1980s, a worker is killed in the striking coalfields of Wales. Some months later, a government minister thought to be connected with the death is also shot. Lewis Redfern—once a radical but now a political analyst and journalist—pursues the sniper, a lonely hunt that leads him through an imbroglio of civil service leaks to a secret organization: a source of insurrection far more powerful than anyone could have suspected known as the Volunteers. In this fast-paced narrative of espionage and intrigue, Redfern, through his obsessive pursuit of justice, finally encounters the truth about himself as the novel discusses the conflict between moral choice and political loyalty.