The execution for desertion of a young officer during the first world war goes disastrously wrong. What exactly happened? Who was there, and why have some of those involved met untimely deaths? This is the crux of a novel that is a marriage of who-done-it and commentary on the class-ridden attitudes of the early 20th century. The action takes place in the immediate wake of the war, when battle-damaged men try to adjust to civilian life. One of these, Laurence Bartram, is persuaded to try and find out why a fellow officer, John Emmett, has apparently committed suicide; the persuader is Emmett’s sister Mary — romance hangs in the air.
The ensuing narrative twists and turns its way from one hypothesis to another, by way of a large cast and much speculative conversation between Laurence and another old comrade-in-arms, who is given to reading Agatha Christie, while serving as a sort of Watson to Laurence’s Holmes.
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