In the 1950's, in McCarthyite Hollywood, former Pinkerton and hack screen writer Toby Slaughter failed to prevent the murder of his Mexican lover at the hands of a powerful Hollywood cabal. More than a decade later, in 1960's Britain, he is a washed out gumshoe, like a cliche from one of his own films offered a chance to redeem himself by tracking down missing heiress Susan Featherstone. But the closer he gets to his target the more dangerous and duplicitous it gets with nothing less than the future of British democracy - and his own life - at stake