Sunday September 3rd, 1939. At the moment Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain broadcasts to the nation Britains declaration of war with Germany, a senior Secret Service agent breaks into Maisie Dobbss flat to await her return. Dr. Francesca Thomas has an urgent assignment for Maisie: to find the killer of a man who escaped occupied Belgium as a boy, some twenty-three years earlier during the Great War. Within days, in a London shadowed by barrage balloons, bomb shelters, and the threat of invasion, another former Belgian refugee is found murdered. And as Maisie delves deeper into the killings of the dispossessed from the last war, a new kind of refugeean evacuee from Londonappears in Maisies life. While Maisies search for the killer escalates, the country braces for what is to come. Britain is approaching its gravest hourand Maisie could be nearing a crossroads of her own.
