It is the year 1939. Jackie and Mary are just two of the millions of ordinary Londoners whose lives are changed by extraordinary circumstances. Unmarried yet very much in love, their life together before the war is ordered and conventional enough: Jackie's work as a labourer brings in modest but adequate funds while Mary is content in her role about the house. The coming of war changes all of this as, under the influence of the slyly affable Jonathan Leakey, a go-between for the urbane, sinister and thoroughly corrupting Nigel Wisley, Jackie is inveigled into underworld activities which soon earn him the local nickname, Jack the Lad. Jackie's friend and erstwhile drinking partner, Dickie Wheat, finds his life similarly altered; what with doctors being more in demand than ever before. Perhaps most changed though, is Mary; the circumstances of whose transformation make up the bloody heart and soul of this novel.