Scribe, drug-addict, soldier, spy - a brilliant and troubled jurist in Europe's highest courts becomes a double agent, risking it all amidst the crimes that define our era Stanton is an ex-soldier who served in Iraq and speaks with a stutter, his legacy from a difficult childhood. He is also the unlikely star jurist at the Court of Justice of the European Union. Stanton is responsible for translating Europe's biggest court cases into laws that will govern the lives of millions. But when he meets an enigmatic stranger called Pirotti at a conference in the Swiss Alps, his allegiance begins to shift. Pirotti offers Stanton two blue pills, known as petit bleus , for the war wound that still troubles him and the effects are so powerful - and addictive - they send Stanton into visions and reveries of pure feeling. Crucially, they bring him closer than anything else to the defining moment of his life: a violent incident in Iraq that continues to haunt him. Soon Stanton finds himself passing the Court's confidential papers to Pirotti's colleagues in exchange for a steady supply of the petit bleus . When the Court begins to detect a leak in security, it suspects everyone but Stanton, who can do no wrong.

All it needs is for Stanton to deliver a landmark ruling, more important and far-reaching than anything he has written before. But Stanton has been working on something else, a vast document of markings, patterns and revelations that has the power to change, and destroy, the life he and those around him have so carefully constructed.