Cecil Day-Lewis writing in The Spectator under his pen name Nicholas Blake noted in his review that the author "turns from pure detection to the novel of character with a crime motif.

The turn, to my mind, is not for the better: but that may be because I don’t care for hunting and shooting, which play a large part in the book, and because I found the hero, Sir Robert D’Arcy, rather a stick."

Sir Robert D’Arcy, the high sheriff of Brackenshire is blackmailed by a man who knows of his act of cowardice against the Germans during the First World War.

D’Arcy, a proud and arrogant man from a leading family of the county can't bear the potential slur against his name.

When the blackmailer is shot dead during a shooting party at D’Arcy's country house, suspicion inevitably falls on him.