1942. Hull, East Yorkshire - It is the most heavily-bombed city outside of London - but for the sake of national morale the Hull Blitz is kept top secret. Only the politicians in Whitehall and Hull's citizens themselves know of the true chaos.
Newly-posted Inspector Ambrose Swift cannot believe the devastation he finds. But for Swift and his two deputies - part-time bare-knuckle boxer Jim 'Little' Weighton and Dales farmer's daughter Kathleen Carver - it's murder, not the war, that's at the forefront of their minds. When a series of sadistic killings is wrongly blamed on locally-stationed black American GIs, Swift, a one-armed former WW1 cavalryman who tours the rubble-strewn city on a white horse, soon discovers these are no ordinary murders.
The fetid stench of racism, corruption and perversion go to the very top. And for Swift, Weighton and Carver, finding the real killers means putting their own lives at risk - because powerful forces in the US and Britain cannot let the war effort be undermined. Not even by the truth.
