He is an honest, hard-working, but irreligious and immoral accountant, employed by a successful industrial firm in Paris.

He is mildly troubled that his firm expends considerable effort conniving to avoid paying its legitimate taxes.

The reader is introduced to his family, sulky, plucky daughter Odette and sickly wife Marie, friends, his coworkers and other people he meets in his business life.

The "petit bourgeois" in the novel are shabby and bewildered as they assist helplessly at their nation's funeral, but they stand in brilliant contrast to the insatiable greed and craftiness of the wealthy.

Some readers have noticed similarities between Marshall's 1943 novel Yellow Tapers for Paris and Irène Némirovsky's Suite Française which was written at about the same time, but not discovered until 1998.

Both books were written during and/or immediately after the actual period itself, but show considerable reflection—they aren't just "diary" entries.

Even more remarkable considering the activities of the authors at the time—Némirovsky struggling to evade the Nazis and protect her two daughters and Marshall working for the British Army.