Paris, 1943. The swastika flies from the top of the Eiffel Tower. Soldiers clad in field grey patrol the streets. Buildings have been renamed, books banned, art stolen and people disappeared. Amongst the missing is an Allied intelligence cell. Gone to ground? Betrayed? Dead? Britain's Special Operations Executive need to find out. They recruit ex-Parisian and Bletchley Park codebreaker Harry Mitchell to return to the city he fled two years ago. Mitchell knows Occupied Paris - a city at war with itself.

Informers, gangsters, collaborators and Resistance factions are as ready to slit each other's throats as they are the Germans'. The occupiers themselves are no better: the Gestapo and the Abwehr - military intelligence - are locked in their own lethal battle for dominance. Mitchell knows the risks: a return to Paris not a mission - it's a death sentence. But he has good reason to put his life on the line: the wife and daughter he was forced to leave behind have fallen into the hands of the Gestapo and Michell will do whatever it takes to save them. But with disaster afflicting his mission from the outset, it will take all his ingenuity, all his courage, to even get into Paris. unaware that every step he takes towards the capital is a step closer to a trap well set and baited. 'Absolutely amazing. I'd never thought that another writer could rival Bernard Cornwell.

The level of suspense is ratcheted up to a truly brutal level' SHARON PENMAN. 'A gripping ride through a memorable period of history' WILBUR SMITH. 'Once again Gilman demonstrates why he's a superlative talent in his field and why hist-fict fans like me will continue to hang on to his every breath-taking, shock-ridden, plot-twisting word' THE BOOKBAG . 'Gripping and full of action, but is also smart and subtle about questions of loyalty and guilt in a war with few good guys' THE TIMES .