In the newest novel featuring Victorian-era sleuth Thomas Pitt, London is a city besieged by anarchists. After a violent gun battle between rioters and police, a chase culminates in narrow, cobbled Long Spoon Lane, where Magnus Landsborough, the young son of Lord Sheridan Landsborough, is shot to death. Two anarchists are arrested, and they provide conflicting evidence about Landsborough's death: whether he was the victim of an accident or murder, and whether he was a hostage of the anarchists or an anarchist himself.