First published 2026
Harry Flynn returns to London in 1949 after years as a prisoner of war in Singapore. The former foreign correspondent takes a desk job with The Festival of Britain, working alongside an eccentric group of colleagues preparing the government celebration of British culture. Flynn begins dating a difficult French woman, but she vanishes after one of their evenings together. He wakes up with a black eye and no memory of what happened after she left. Police focus their investigation on Flynn as the last person who saw her. Evidence starts building against him. Flynn questions whether he could have killed her without remembering. He also wonders if his new coworkers at the Festival might be working against him. The missing woman case forces Flynn to navigate both the suspicions of investigators and the uncertain loyalties of people around him. Atkinson sets her story in a Britain trying to move past wartime trauma while still struggling with the complexities of peace.
Genres: historical-fiction, 20th-century, mystery, crime, british-literature, thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, gritty, introspective, suspenseful
Tropes: false-accusation, mystery-investigation, paranoia, unreliable-narrator
Setting: London, Singapore, Britain
Period: 1949, post-World War II
464 pages · Paperback · Random House Large Print
Content warnings: murder, violence