It is November 1941, nine months after the British surrender. Douglas Archer is a British homicide detective assigned to Scotland Yard. He is torn between loyalty to his country and his professional commitment to law enforcement. He begins investigating what seems to be a typical murder case in London, but which finally involves him in the highest levels of the Nazi occupation government.

Len Deighton imagines a chilling alternative world where British Command surrendered to the Nazis in 1941, Churchill has been shot, the King is in the dungeon, and the SS are in Whitehall. In Scotland Yard, Detective Inspector Archer is assigned to what seems like a routine murder case--until SS Standartenführer Huth arrives with orders from Himmler himself to supervise the investigation. This is a spy story different from any other--one that only Deighton, with his flair for historical research and his narrative genius, could have written.