"The sudden trace of a troubling, familiar smell takes Stephen Wheatley back to a dimly remembered yet disturbing childhood summer in wartime London. As he pieces together the scattered images, we are transported to a quiet street, where two boys - Keith and his sidekick Stephen - are engaged in their own version of the war effort: spying on the neighbors, recording their movements, ferreting out their secrets.".

"In the peaceful Close, the only visible signs of war are the nightly blackout and a single random bombsite. To the boys, though, the whole district is riddled with secret passages, underground laboratories, and hideaways for secret agents that must be monitored. And then, with six shocking words, Keith reveals that the Germans have infiltrated his family; from that point, the espionage game takes a sinister and unintended turn.

A wife's simple errands and a family's ordinary rituals, the unremarkable geography of post office and railway tracks, are no longer the objects of childish speculation but the tragic elements of adult catastrophe."--BOOK JACKET.