"It is 1943. Fortress Stalingrad has fallen; 145,000 German soldiers have been slaughtered and the Russians have taken 91,000 prisoners. The tide of the war is beginning to turn.".

"The brutal reach of combat, however, continues to elude quiet, idyllic Guernsey in the Channel Islands, the only British territory to be occupied by German troops in World War II. Here Nazi officers still party with local girls, love affairs blossom, and the Guernsey Amateur Dramatic and Operatic Society blithely stages its theatricals, if with suspiciously jackbooted pirates in Peter Pan.

Then the body of the young, pretty Isobel van Dielen, her nose and mouth filled with cement, is found dead in a bunker, and the comedy of collaborative manners goes sour." "As the skies over Guernsey darken and the facades of civility start to crack, Isobel's ghastly death forges an uneasy alliance between the cultured, high-ranking Nazi officer Major Lentsch and the island's principled police inspector Ned Luscombe, both of whom have admired the victim more than from afar."--BOOK JACKET.