It is late 1942, and Detective Inspector Tom Tyler is settling into his placement in Ludlow, Shropshire, which is crowded with evacuees and others fleeing the German bombs. On the town's outskirts is an Italian PoW camp, whose inmates work on local farms. Fraternizing is forbidden but, as Tyler knows only too well, the human heart has a way of crossing boundaries.Tyler is kept busy enforcing wartime regulations, until an old man goes missing, and his body is later discovered in a secret hideout supposedly known to very few. What's more, the two evacuee children who found the body are clearly not telling the whole truth, but when Tyler tries to question them further, they vanish from their foster home. A crime has clearly been committed, but there is no shortage of suspects...