Previously published as Borderline by Barry Rainsford. October 1984.

After six months the miners' strike is at its fiercest. Everyday brings yet further hostile confrontation between police and pickets at collieries across the country.

In the aftermath of one such incident a picket is found brutally beaten to death. With 600 hundred suspects, hundreds of them fellow officers, the challenge to Detective Inspector Peter Kalus is difficult enough.

That the outcome of the investigation is seen as a political cause for both the supporters of the strike and those who oppose it only adds to the pressure for a rapid solution. Kalus soon discovers that the victim was much more than a simple miner.

He was a man with enemies, any one of whom profited from his death. As the plot unfolds Kalus - a man fighting his own personal and professional demons - is lead further and further into a complex nightmare of political conspiracies, betrayals and murder.

It becomes evident that others will also die unless Kalus can unravel the truth of the murdered picket; a truth that if revealed could bring down the Thatcher government and change the face of British politics forever. .