Ulyse Bland doesn't know what he wants - but he knows where to get it. A castaway in the chaos of the late 1970s, bereft of belief, a drone in a dead-end job, Ulyse stumbles onto the Sex Pistols one night-and suddenly finds himself on a plane to the mean streets of England, in the midst of its 'winter of discontent,' in a mad search for ... well, the meaning of it all. His journey draws him into the orbit of streetwise dreamer Penny Lane, embittered Royal Navy exile Jingo, the fledgling, floundering pop group The Acid of Alienation and an eccentric host of others - all under the specter of his long-lost, expatriate English father.

The author of this long and detailed account of the investigations into the Haymarket case was a member of the police force and a colleague of Inspector Bonfield, the police officer who led the police into the crowd at Haymarket on May 4, 1886. The book, which was widely distributed at the time, included many documents from the case, descriptions of testimony at trial, and many drawings of people and incidents. The author, Michael Schaack, and Inspector Bonfield were subsequently dismissed from the Chicago Police after an investigation for corruption. Subsequent investigations of the trial uncovered perjured testimony by police witnesses and others, and jury rigging by the prosecution.