Written by 'a sublimely elegant historical novelist as addictive as crack' - Daily Telegraph

The first book in John Lawton's Inspector Troy series, selected by Time magazine as one of 'Six Detective Series to Savour' alongside Michael Connelly and Donna Leon.

The Blitz, London, 1944.

As the Luftwaffe make their last desperate assault on the city, Londoners take to the shelters once again and eagerly await the signal for D-Day. In the East End children lead police to a charred, dismembered corpse buried in a bombsite. The victim is German and it soon becomes clear that this is no ordinary murder.

For Russian emigré Detective-Sergeant Troy it is the start of a manhunt which will lead him into a world of military intelligence and corruption in high places; a manhunt in which Troy is both the hunter and the hunted.