'Babe hobbled to his feet. His ankle hurt like hell and his face had scraped along the pavement, but he knew the sound of a beaten runner when he heard it. I'm a marathon man, he thought, a real one, and you better not mess with me. Then Jesus, Babe thought suddenly - they're coming for me in the car.'

Tom 'Babe' Levy is a runner in every sense: racing tirelessly toward his goals of athletic and academic excellence - and endlessly away from the spectre of his famous father's scandal-driven suicide. But an unexpected visit from his beloved older brother sets in motion a chain of events that plunges Babe into a vortex of treachery and murder. Stumbling into the violent world of couriers and assassins, espionage and torture, the boy who dreamed of winning races suddenly becomes a man forced to race for his life ... and for the answer to the fateful question, 'Is it safe?'