"[2] The book is set in 1922 in Camberwell[3] where spinster Frances lives with her genteel mother Mrs Wray and mourns the death of her brothers in the Great War.

Her father has died leaving considerable debts and they are obliged to take in lodgers: Lilian and Leonard Barber of the "clerk class".

Waters wrote, "Having set my two previous books in the 1940s I thought I’d venture back a couple of decades, and in the pursuit of information about British domestic life in the interwar years I began looking at murder cases; I went to them purely, really, for the sake of their incidental detail.

Waters continues "The impact of the First World War was to shake things up enormously, loosening up old mores, fashions and behaviours.

[7] On the November/December 2014 issue of Bookmarks, the book received (4.0 out of 5) stars, with the critical summary saying, "Waters's skill at evoking historical time periods is peerless, and she also once again delivers romantic relationships with a powerfully erotic charge.