In 1950, Juliet Armstrong, a producer of children's programmes at the BBC, sees Godfrey Toby, a man she knew during WWII.

The following morning Juliet is sought out by the police who believed she was dead as they found the body of a young woman with her identification papers.

After Mrs. Scaife's arrest, Juliet and Godfrey were involved in killing Dolly, one of the low-level Nazi sympathisers, after she accidentally discovered their operation.

Returning home Juliet finds a mysterious visitor waiting for her, a friend of Godfrey's, and realises she was being spied on for years by MI5 as she was a double agent for the Soviets, recruited at her MI5 interview.

Thirty years later, MI5 forcibly repatriates her to help flush out other Soviet spies, including Oliver Alleyne.

[1] Lisa Allardyce, writing for The Guardian, viewed it as continuing "the puzzle-making of a mystery with the historical settings of her other fiction".

[3] Stephanie Merritt, reviewing it for the same newspaper, called it "a fine example of Atkinson’s mature work; an unapologetic novel of ideas, which is also wise, funny and paced like a spy thriller".

[6] Jennifer Egan, for The New York Times, highlighted Atkinson's "unexpected and inspired" use of comedy in the first half of the novel, but viewed Juliet as becoming "cipherlike" in the later stages.