After three years of service overseas during World War II, Campion returns home to enjoy two precious weeks of leave, and immediately gets drawn into murder.This is a novel of change, of the wreck of the old world, and the formation of a new one, as the madcap attitudes of the 20s-30s generation give way to one coming of age during a time of bombing and deprivation. Also a solid mystery - though with the police a little inclined to fix on one suspect above all others.