The third book in the Squire Quartet.

Russian born Dominic is one of the success stories of the eighties, when yuppies made fortunes on the stock market .

Ray Tebbutt is among the unlucky ones. He was involved in a bankruptcy in the mid-eighties .

Peter Petrik, a dissident Czech film director, lives in Prague, dreaming of making more films when times improve .

The lifelines of these people and others - comic and sad by turns in true Aldiss fashion - converge towards the finality of an IRA bomb episode in Great Yarmouth.