Kevin Flynn thought soldiering would be a great adventure but on the bloody killing fields of The Somme it became a nightmare. Disillusioned by war, he is unprepared for the bitter troubles dividing his home in Ireland, a squalid back street feud he neither understands nor cares for. Drifting into the ranks of the Royal Irish Constabulary and posted to a quiet rural backwater the peace is shattered by the IRA. Sucked into a world where the stench of death is inescapable and divided loyalties turn old friends into enemies, Flynn must decide what he is prepared to do to save the woman he loves from the vengeance of the men who revile him as a traitor, one of England's Janissaries.