Portsmouth, 1905

Private detective Jane Dowling is invited down to Southsea to look into the death of Commander Granger, one of three men who are questioning the Royal Navy's strategy for building ever bigger battleships, at the start of the dreadnought arms race with Germany. The dockyard at Portsmouth is the biggest industrial complex in the world at the time, capable of building one battleship a year, yet it relies on workers who live in conditions as poor as any London slum. The war to come will be long, bloody and frustrating and will ultimately be decided as much by revolution and mutiny, as it will be by sheer force of arms.

Working with the local police Jane discovers a group of anarchists are planning an attack on the dockyard, but gets caught up in the politics of the town, and becomes too close to the enigmatic Inspector Ezekiel who has problems of his own. When there is a second death, Inspector Downes, an inspector Jane has worked with before comes down from Scotland Yard, because the Metropolitan Police are responsible for policing the dockyard.

A Swiss foreign agent, Emelia Hawkes, is eager to understand the secrets of Commander Granger's strategy, and she engages a number of the anarchists who have fled London to disrupt progress. All the time the head of the dockyard, Admiral Phoenix has been quietly examining Granger's ideas and building a facility to study sea battles in the way he suggested. None of this solves the initial problem for the Granger sisters, as to who killed their father and why.