When Greg and Inderjit start working on their maths project together, they realise it adds up to more than just pie charts and histograms. They discover all about a nuclear aircraft crash in 1968. In the meantime Greg finds out about a more personal cover up in his family.

The disconcerting aspect of this book is that the issues it considers are so likely to be out there in reality, concealed by the elaborate and ruthless machinery of officialdom with its ability to wield an immensely powerful moral airbrush.

 The author, Nick Manns, comes from an RAF family, and clearly has informed concerns about accidents and experiments which have taken place since the advent of a nuclear potential, and which have remained restricted information, known only to those who were involved, their silence still being enforced many years afterwards. His teenage protagonists Greg and Inderjit refuse to accept unthinking, irrational or prejudiced attitudes, whether it be about a military plane crash or who your friends should be. Forced to collaborate in a Maths project, each begins with a wariness of the other verging on distrust, but gradually realizes that whatever may apparently divide them socially or culturally, they share a basic humanity, together with a relentless drive to uncover the truth and achieve some form of justice and closure for the victims of government policy.

Greg, however has the aftermath of a family tragedy to face, and the long repressed feelings of guilt empower both his relentless investigation of the public coverup, and his final decision. When this decision is acted upon, he is secure in the knowledge that Inderjit will continue their pursuit of justice as relentlessly as the authorities have pursued them.

 A well written and exciting novel with many disturbing questions about integrity, ethics, and culapability, both physical and moral, which will exercise the minds of older Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3 readers.