Laurence Schofield’s world was torn apart when his teenage daughter vanished one day in the middle of Birmingham. No trace of her was found. But six years later, a T.V crew filming homeless people in London record’s a few seconds’ footage of a girl who just might be her.

Schofield heads for the capital, thinking it will be simple. But this isn’t the London of the tourist brochures: it’s the Tinderbox, an area of dangerous dereliction where the homeless have created an alternative society with its own rules.

He’s rescued by a teenage boy on the run from a family disaster of his own. Jonah knows how to survive in the alien landscape. What he hasn’t yet learnt is how to protect himself from the ruthlessness of a man who thinks nothing matters as much as finding his lost child…