When streetwise Detective Inspector "Jacko" Jackson comes face to face with the irresistible Maureen Beckby, secret lover of Michael Hegan, notorious terrorist hitman, he feels his toes curl... Hegan blew the cover of a new life in a peaceful English hamlet called New York by returning to crime - a shotgun raid on a bank that netted two million pounds, never to be recovered. While he is awaiting trial, a young animal rights activist, convicted of a fire bombing, is poisoned in the cell block below the crown court. Special Branch suspect Hegan was the intended target. To silence him? Out of revenge? With his usual sardonic humor, Jack manipulates the coroner's routine inquiry into the prisoner's death to find out which policeman Maureen corrupted to get her lover inside information for the bank job.