As Enoch Powell delivers his Rivers of Blood speech, disillusioned young people, black and white, come together to dance the night away to Northern Soul music at all-nighters. In Newcastle, their haven of equality is destroyed when a young black girl is murdered. Gently and Bacchus have their eyes opened to the shocking consequences of casual racism as racial tension spirals out of control, leaving a path of destroyed friendships, love affairs and families in its wake.

It is 1968 and the shame of illegitimacy still burns the cheeks of single mothers and the families who force their unmarried daughters into 'mother and baby homes'. When the adopted child of a middle-class couple is kidnapped, suspicion falls upon the baby's birth mother. However, Gently and Bacchus's investigation into the mother and baby home itself reveals a much darker side to this hothouse of morality and raises serious questions about this seemingly perfect couple.