This story starts with a quiet and eccentric student at Oxford, who is being bullied. Her uncle – a lecturer in another college – takes on Sophie as a researcher, but was once an MI5 informant, to see if she can also deter these left-wing thugs.
Sophie – a feet-on-the-ground Welsh girl – discovers that research articles are being stolen and sold on to foreign buyers and that political propaganda pamphlets are being secretly paid for with government funds. Civil servants are, it becomes clear, also leaking intelligence staff details to various ‘civil liberties’ groups.
There is no sex, no shooting. Sophie is low-key and patient and only subtly does she turn the tide on these villains or persuade them to change their ways.