Eva Wylie is supposed to teach the prostitutes in her neighborhood self-defense while also finding and killing a murderer on the side. However, as Eva reluctantly conducts training sessions filled with screams and kicks, it seems the whole world is conspiring against her. The ground beneath her painstakingly built existence begins to crumble, and Eva sees red. She is a breaker, a catcher, coming from the very bottom, where all the misery wrought by Thatcherism and post-Thatcherism has hit hard. There, street rats abound, prostitutes must work under the worst conditions, and violence is a common way of life, even among women. Liza Cody's England is light-years away from that of her well-groomed murdering colleagues. Cody has developed a new narrative voice with the voice of the ugly catcher: defiant and sentimental, dark and humorous.