When Dylan Evans finds a murder victim surrounded by ancient artefacts in one of his fields he calls in the north Wales Police. A detectorist and EOD consultant named Bronze is recommended to Detective Inspector Mark Starling as a local expert in the type of artefacts, which appear to come from the Kosovo region. The murder inquiry raises issues related to Bronze's time in the Balkans as an EOD specialist with the army, and in particular with a Serbian bomber called Misko that Bronze had been hunting at the end of the Kosovo conflict who was implicated in the murder of Bronze's lover over twenty years ago.
The trail takes Bronze back to Pristina, where his detailed knowledge of disarming Misko devices is brought back into play, before he returns to north Wales and finds both he and his partner Ingrid are targeted by people who don't want him to survive. The trail culminates in a fight for his life as he attempts to disarm a massive Semtex bomb strapped to an innocent man in the bowels of his accomodation.