Local police thought George Picket was little more than a serial complainer, but as Chairman of the Chelmsford Allotment Society, the summers run-in with a wayward group of youths had begun to reach ever more serious heights. Then one late October evening a single match lights a trail of suburban death and destruction, whose dreadful hidden consequences reach far beyond the innocent allotment plots. Freelance reporter Jack Latimer takes up Pickets case, completely unaware of the millennial nightmare the Chairmans tale will unearth. A severed head, a badly bungled drugs deal, a dead hangmans grandson and the menace of juvenile crime are just some of the elements Jack will encounter in reporting a story which threatens to destroy not only his career, butr his very life, too.