John W. Campbell Memorial Award nominee 2007
Nebula Award nominee 2007
One summer weekend in 1949—but not our 1949—the well-connected
“Farthing set”, a group of upper-crust English families, enjoy a
country retreat. Lucy is a minor daughter in one of those families; her
parents were both leading figures in the group that overthrew Churchill
and negotiated peace with Herr Hitler eight years before.
Despite her parents' evident disapproval, Lucy is married—happily—to a
London Jew. It was therefore quite a surprise to Lucy when she and her
husband David found themselves invited to the retreat. It's even more
startling when, on the retreat's first night, a major politician of the
Farthing set is found gruesomely murdered, with abundant signs that the
killing was ritualistic.
It quickly becomes clear to Lucy that she and David were brought to the
retreat in order to pin the murder on him. Major political machinations
are at stake, including an initiative in Parliament, supported by the
Farthing set, to limit the right to vote to university graduates. But
whoever's behind the murder, and the frame-up, didn't reckon on the
principal investigator from Scotland Yard being a man with very private
reasons for sympathizing with outcasts…and looking beyond the obvious.
As the trap slowly shuts on Lucy and David, they begin to see a way out—a way fraught with peril in a darkening world.
