This is a nightmare of the Information Age, which features a man who is haunted by ghosts planted in computers, who is incriminated by transactions beyond human memory and physical confirmation, and who is condemned because others assume that the transactions have taken place because they appear in computer records.
   Dr. Mike Kreymer was a research assistant with the NSCD, a Home Office unit that dealt in intractable cases. When the No Sodding Chance Department, as it was known to the police, became involved in a puzzle in Wales, Kreymer began to have severe personal problems. A multi-million-pound mess created by a friend drew him deeper into a cycle of suspion, which threatened his future and that of the NSCD. Deliberate mischief-making by another friend complicated matters further, straining relationships to breaking point.
   When he disappeared in France with fellow research assistant Emma Thorson, Superintendent Poole was left with the problem of deciding whether Kreymer was an academic, who saw crime on a theoretical level, or a man of great cunning, who could be forced into compounding a crime himself if he saw that he had no other choice.