Lord Edward Corinth embarks on his most important investigation. It is 1939 and it is clear that Britain will soon be at war and MI5 has learnt that an enemy agent has been dispatched to England to assassinate Winston Churchill. The assassin's identity is unknown and Lord Edward, pursuing one line of enquiry, goes to Cliveden, the Astor's country house in Buckinghamshire. Verity Browne is also at Cliveden, much as she despises the 'Cliveden Set'. She has been ordered by her superiors in the Communist Party to get as close as possible to one of the Astor's guests, Joseph Kennedy, the American Ambassador in the UK. And when the ambassador's sons Joe and Jack Kennedy discover the body of a man in Cliveden's grounds, Verity is dismayed to recognize the dead man as a former journalistic colleague from the civil war which still rages in Spain.The race against time to identify Churchill's would-be assassin and the murderer of Verity's friend takes the intrepid duo to Switzerland and a nail-biting climax on St Moritz's icy Cresta Run. Praise for David Roberts' previous novels: 'A gripping, richly satisfying whodunit with finely observed characters, sparkling with insouciance and stinging menace' - Peter James. 'A classic murder mystery with as complex a plot as one could hope for and a most engaging pair of amateur sleuths' - Charles Osborne, author of The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie. 'This is a witty and meticulous recreation of the class-ridden middle England of the 1930s...a perfect example of golden-age mystery traditions with the cobwebs swept away' - Guardian. 'The plot is both intricate and enthralling, like Poirot on the high seas, and lovingly recorded by an author with a meticulous eye and a huge sense of fun' - Michael Dobbs.