[3] He came back to London after the war and briefly joined his family's business, but in September 1949 he decided to pursue a career in writing.

He performed that work for seven months at a jungle mission station in a remote village about 40 miles (64 km) from Ranchi, India.

[3] Set in Burma and other Far East locations during World War II, it centres on the homosexual relationship between an officer, Tony Kent, and his batman Anson.

[4][5] Although Kent, a British officer stationed in Burma, loves his wife back in England, he seduces a Eurasian nurse.

Kent initially divulges nothing more than his name, rank and serial number, but after being shown how his fellow soldiers had been tortured, and he is threatened with the same, he reveals to his Japanese interrogator all of the information he knows.

The UK edition ends with the following passage, which gives the book its title: As his body began to plunge towards the drive he held his arms in a grotesque attitude as though to break his fall and he cried out; but not for mercy.However, the American edition features a happier ending, in which it is made clear that Kent survives and resolves to pursue a life with Anson.

[7] Look Down in Mercy was hailed as "an uncommonly good first novel" by Time magazine,[2] and has been deemed "a pioneering study of gay relationships in a hostile and indifferent world".

[8] A 1956 scholarly journal article, "The Most Neglected Books of the Past Twenty-Five Years", cited the novel as "very remarkable ... even as truly great", but claimed that most American critics had not acknowledged this.

In March 1954, the Sunday Express printed a column in which Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook stated that the lesson to be surmised from the book's "erotic odyssey" was that "sexual excess can be indulged in with a light heart and a clear conscience".

"[12] In October 1954, Baxter and Frere were put on trial at the Old Bailey,[10] charged under the Obscene Publications Act 1857[13] for The Image and The Search.

Frere also released a statement, saying in part, "I regard Walter Baxter as one of the most gifted writers of this generation, whose powers are not yet fully developed.

I feel that the publishers owe a duty to such writers and to the public to ensure that their creative work is not still-born.