As the novel begins, English teacher Raymond Ash is wondering whether or not he's got all
wrong He's not ready for the responsibility of parenthood, and his small child is depriving
himself and his wife of enough sleep so that they both feel they might be going mad
The classes of thugs he finds himself facing in his new job seem more than ready to take him
and the entire staff on, and many better armed than the teachers, He takes refuge in on line
gaming, since he's not doing so well in his Real Life TM role Thus, when he sees his old
school friend Simon, with whom he was in a band in college, he thinks he must be hallucinating,
because he knows that Simon died in a plane crash a few years ago In point of fact, the plane
was brought down by a terrorist bomb, the one that Simon planted in order to erase his identity
and start life anew as "the Black Spirit", the world's most feared terrorist for hire

Raymond's life rapidly gets worse than he could possibly imagine as it once again intersects
with Simon's In the telling, we get a boatload of prime Brookmyre rants, starting off with
this gem about road rage:

"Risking his life in an attempt to overtake before the crawler lane ends, so that he'll be one
car -- one car -- up the queue when he reaches the traffic lights And what does that tell you
about the life he was risking?

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