Underworld boss Bernie 'Tenderness' Mellick is certainly paying a heavy price for maiming Ivor Wright in a firebombing. For Wright's men have now kidnapped his eleven-year-old son Graham. Senior Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur and his brilliant, amoral superior ACC Desmond Iles must rescue the boy from the kidnappers before Tenderness takes his revenge in this adaptation of Bill James' novel Protection.