A body washes ashore at Slapton Sands, a restricted stretch of the Devon coast being used for Operation Tiger, the secret rehearsal for the Normandy landings. Billy Boyle and Piotr Kazimierz are ordered to identify the dead man without revealing why thousands of American troops are training in the area.
Their inquiry takes them into Ashcroft, a nearby country house divided by family secrets and old resentments. When the disastrous rehearsal produces hundreds of military deaths and another man dies at the estate, Billy must distinguish private murder from wartime catastrophe while protecting an operation whose exposure could endanger the coming invasion.
