Why are men on Merseyside going up on rooftops? One at a time, with no apparent connection between one another, up they climb. A man called McKelnikov sets out in search of answers but he is presented with more questions: what has this to do with pirate ships and the Middle Passage, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The Beat Generation and Elvis? A present-day novel based in post-colonial, post-Merseybeat, post-Brexit Liverpool, Duncan Lyon searches out a cast of characters on the brink of discovering their own beautifully brutal truths and while the world looks elsewhere a city and its people are going literally "up the wall". When did it start? On whose orders? On whose command? And where is it supposed to end? What are they looking for and what do they find? Why isn't it happening anywhere else yet?