Ace reporter and lesbian socialist Lindsay Gordon is once again in the thick of events when an alleged assault at a women's peace encampment north of London turns deadly. After a former lover of Gordon's is first accused of attacking, and then murdering, prominent citizen and vocal anti-Brownlow Common activist Rupert Crabtree, Gordon finds herself embroiled in an investigation with far-reaching implications. These extend far beyond the women's peace movement, all the way up to the highest levels of Her Majesty's government. In the course of solving a crime that some authorities are determined to pin on a community of women activists, Gordon is forced to confront all the contradictions in her life: her personal loyalties as a friend and a lover, her political convictions as a working-class lesbian, her professional responsibilities as a journalist, and her civil obligations as an English subject. As she works her way through the tangle of personal conflicts and state secrets that led to Crabtree's murder, Lindsay Gordon discovers, sometimes to her own surprise, what concessions she can make in her life and what things are beyond compromise.