In this explosive thriller set in "post-terrorist" Belfast, the old hatreds continue to fester and the politics remain deeply personal. Anyone, at any moment, may decide the war's not yet over.

Belfast journalist Dan Starkey is caught by his wife wrapped in the arms of a woman he hardly knows. Within hours his virtually anonymous girlfriend has been murdered, and before anyone can sort out whether she was killed by the IRA, Protestant extremists, or a jealous beau, Starkey has become the killer's next target. He had always kept himself above Belfast's violent fray with the cynical, beer-drenched wit that fueled his notorious column in a Protestant newspaper.

But when the Belfast police figure Starkey as their prime suspect, his wits are suddenly all he has left to keep himself ahead of both sides of the law - and to win back his wife. As he seeks to solve the crime himself, his frantic pursuit of the only clues to the killer's identity leads him deep into the most guarded reaches of Northern Irish political power.