[2] Set in England, it follows the lives of characters working in and around a fictional British Army camp where a secret weapon is being tested.

The principal ones include: At the camp: Colonel "Chalky" White, commanding officer, professional soldier, a companionable man, wounded in North Africa during World War II; Major William "Willie" Ayscue, military chaplain with a pragmatic approach to Christianity, an amateur musician; Major Venables (whose given name no-one knows), chief instructor in the camp, of the Army Information Corps (a fictional unit), about 50 years old, admittedly a civilian in uniform; Captain Maximilian "Max" Hunter, Carabinier Guards (a fictional regiment), administration officer, intermittently an alcoholic; Captain Brian Leonard, security officer, a 40-year-old civilian counter-intelligence agent recently, for the purposes of Operation Apollo, commissioned into the 17th Dragoons ("The Sailors"), a fictional regiment with long and glorious history and traditions; Captain Moti Naidu, Indian Army officer on secondment, with a philosophical nature firmly grounded in Hinduism; Captain Alastair Ross-Donaldson, adjutant to the Colonel, who combines a tendency to technical intellectualism with military efficiency; Lieutenant James Churchill, Blue Howards (a fictional regiment),[Note 1] 24 years old; Private Deering, Brian's batman and principal informant in the camp; and Signalman Andy Pearce, a soldier who plays the flute.

Outside the camp: Dr Best, a psychiatrist who believes that psychiatric problems are the result of repressed homosexual or lesbian tendencies and who can without difficulty diagnose insanity in anyone; Lady Lucy Hazell, aged around 35, a widow with a remarkable sexual appetite who keeps open house for the army officers, among other men; and Catharine "Cathy" Casement, separated from her husband (who does not appear in the novel),[Note 2] early 30s, a sufferer from clinical depression, living in Lucy's house.

As they return to camp, they come across a motorcycle dispatch rider in the Royal Corps of Signals who has been fatally injured in a traffic accident.

Cathy gains employment as a barmaid; she and James meet and fall in love (a major plot line which continues to the end of the novel).

In Lucy's library, Willie discovers the manuscript of a trio-sonata for flute, violin and piano by the fictional late 18th century composer Thomas Roughead (this forms a minor sub-plot).

[Note 3] Brian visits the hospital, where he drops heavy hints about the secret nature of the project at the camp.

Alastair summons Brian back urgently, because public notices have been discovered in the camp advertising the formation of a branch of "The Anti-Death League".

James (who has the highest security clearance for Operation Apollo) says to Max (who does not) that he visualises a lethal node, a military term for a place which it is death to enter, but one extending in time rather than in space.

Cathy and James are having a long bedroom conversation about the nature of human relationships, when their room is lit up by the flash of what might be a nighttime use of the weapon.

[Note 4] Jagger has deduced who the anonymous poet,[5] the perpetrator of the Anti-Death League, and the thief are; but has several reasons not to pursue any of those matters further.

Cathy tells James that her treatment should be successful, that she knows the horrific nature of Operation Apollo, that it will not be carried out, and that she loves him.

Walter Allen, quoting other reviewers, writing in the New York Times, said, "It is getting enormously respectful, slightly puzzled attention" and "represents a new phase in Amis's development".

[6] Kirkus Reviews said, "By the close, one has been exposed to so many strenuous activities and ideas, that it's difficult to remember just what has gone on [...] Amis has some marvelous jargon throughout.... All in all, it might be classed as an intellectual thriller-- it's a work of considerable originality and agility and it should keep its readers firmly captive, midway between attention and admiration".

[7] Bernard Bergonzi, writing in The New York Review of Books, called it, "a generalized and implicitly symbolic fiction, in which Mr. Amis has voluntarily surrendered some of his major strengths as a novelist".