Prentis, junior assistant in the 'dead crimes' department of the police archives in London, starts writing a personal memoir almost inadvertently.

It is in response to his growing alienation from his wife and children; to regular visits to his estranged father, who has recently become catatonic and is in hospital; and to the confusing situation at work where he suspects his boss, Quinn, of suppressing crucial files in a case he is asked to investigate.

His father’s story of his work as a spy in Nazi-occupied France, passages from which are interspersed with Prentis’ own narrative, was created to hide the real truth about himself.

[2] In commenting on this in an early survey of Swift's fiction, Del Ivan Janik observed of the narrator’s strategy for dealing with the past - an abiding theme in his work - that it consists in this case of a humanising acceptance of uncertainty.

The layered narratives of the novel, he continues, make of it a "work of art in which all aspects of the craft of fiction combine to create a satisfying whole".