In 1916 Tom Franklin is a lieutenant who finds himself recuperating from a wound at the estate of a friend and fellow officer Captain John Hallows. Hallows' wife lives there along with the beautiful but icy Lady Powerstock (second wife of Hallows' father), his maternal grandfather as well as servants and other wounded officers and an odious American who has designs on Leonora the young wife of Captain Hallows but beds Lady Powerstock. No one is any blood relation to anyone else and when the news comes that Captain Hallows is dead the game begins.

Franklin is attracted to Leonora but she seems to be in thrall somehow to the American while Lady Powerstock does everything she can do to lure any male into her bed. When the American is killed it is soon apparent that this is not your ordinary country house murder. The case is simultaneously solved and remains unresolved for decades.

Leonora gives birth over a year after her husband's death and dies soon after, leaving her daughter to the machinations and intrigues of Lady Powerstock who thwarts every chance of happiness for her young charge. When she escapes at last, the past is stirred up once again when Franklin appears and wants to tell her his part in her story.

Content that she has answers at last she finds that things are still unresolved. Indeed, this tale has so many twists and turns it is a veritable maze but the Truth emerges at last making the reader rethink everything that has gone on before.

What a masterful story! It can even be read as an allegory to the world of the Great War and the decades after. Consider the unlikely allies of WWI - Russia and the United States; what was perceived as true - that the attack on the Lusitania was unprovoked and the fact that now it is known the ship carried armaments; and the ever shifting alliance system of World War II. Isn't this tantalizing? If you are fond of intrigue and deception then this is the tome for you! Pontius Pilate asked, "What is Truth?" and so will you, dear reader.

--Jane Davis