Roger the computer-programming expert is at sea, thrown from the ferry linking England to Holland. He's been under the watch, though clearly none too well, of four British coppers, one of them Detective Inspector Bliss, who made his first appearance in Hawkins' Missing: Presumed Dead. Bliss doesn't know his prey has gone overboard, only that Roger is missing. His colleagues are in the ship's bar, too sozzled to notice even that.

The police aren't the only ones after Roger. And Roger has some dirty little secrets of his own. On Dutch soil, corrupt copper politics (British), near misses (Dutch) and love (international) blossom. Only innocence is in short supply, though Bliss' attraction to a beautiful, blond and independently wealthy Dutch detective stands in contrast to the internet romance Roger conducted with a gullible teen back home. This sordid yarn runs parallel to the search for Roger himself, doubling the tension that drives the novel.

Author James Hawkins has a surprisingly keen elbow for humour for a retired police commander and former lecturer at a British police college. He's not above sticking it into anybody's, from the villains' to the reader's, ribs. Celine Dion and Mrs. Merryweather's dog both make appearances, and that's just in chapter one.

By the end, Hawkins has sent Bliss across the continent to do battle with Saddam Hussein's Republican Guards. The mystery is not so much who, as why and how it all links together, with a heart-suffocating chase against the clock back to England for an ending.