Fourteen-year-old Aleister Lister Smith is sailing through a peaceful existence at a respectable public school in Shropshire. Perhaps too peaceful, even a bit boring at times. The only adventures in his life are the ones he reads about in books like The Count of Monte Cristo. But all that changes one day when the mysterious brother-in-law of his schoolmaster shows up. What are these troubles that the brother-in-law is undergoing, and why does he want Aleister to help him with them? Before he knows what's happening, Aleister finds himself on the way to Manchester, ostensibly to work as a clerk in an insurance office, but really to try to find out the identity of a blackmailer. Complicating his life once he gets there is a young girl named Kate, who quotes Paradise Lost and seems alarmingly lively. Then there is Jack, his co-worker, who sneaks out during work to smoke. It all seems quite a different world from peaceful Shropshire. And then on Guy Fawkes Night, there's a murder.