By all accounts, Pamela Paffrey was plain and painfully shy-the sort of girl that few people miss in the best of times. And with Nazi bombs nightly raining down on London, and hundreds dying every day, these aren't the best of times. This is particularly true for Johnny Hawke, who lost an eye-and his dreams of a military career-to an accident in basic training. Though he has set up shop as a private investigator, Hawke is doing little more than nursing his feelings of inadequacy until the Palfrey's hire him to find their missing daughter. It soon becomes clear that Pamela was nursing some secrets of her own, and Hawke's passion for the case deepens as he comes to sympathize with the young woman's dreams-which, like his own, appear to have been painfully thwarted.

Genre: Mystery