Ben Elton's tenth novel is a historical drama, detective story and romance. Investigator Douglas Kingsley goes to prison for refusing to go to fight in World War I. There, he, a London policeman, faces inevitable death. However, he is kidnapped by the British intelligence service in order to send him to Flanders, not to fight, but to investigate the murder of an officer - a well-born aristocrat and famous poet. He soon realizes that both evidence and witnesses are disappearing in the bloody whirlwind of war. And he himself has practically disappeared - he lives under a false name, his wife was informed that he had died. Will he live under a new name, will he find a new meaning in life and new love?