In the early years of the Second World War an army officer is sent to the Faroe Islands to investigate rumours of a collaboration with the Nazi regime in Norway. What he finds changes lives, not least his own.

No one who reads this book will forget the frozen corpse tied to a chair in an icehouse guarded by two drunken seamen, or the raging storm which batters their, ship as they carry the body to Shetland.

That's just the beginning. As the tale takes grip, the reader becomes haunted, just as the characters are haunted by a sense of guilt and betrayal.

One of the finest...

In the English village of Midmeddlecum, Major Palfrey asks his two daughters to behave themselves while he is off at war. Sighing, Dinah says, "I think that we are quite likely to be bad, however hard we try not to be," and her sister, Dorinda, adds helpfully, "Very often, when we think we are behaving well, some grown-up person says we are really quite bad. It's difficult to tell which is which." Sure enough, the mischievous sisters soon...