Can the small boy who unexpectedly turns up at the front door of Haplow Hall really be heir to the Hawker estates? Is this scruffy French orphan who he claims to be? Is he the illegitimate son of the late John Hawker who died at the Battle of the Somme in 1916, the last in a line of Hawkers that stretches back nine centuries? And what exactly is the secret that Lawrence hopes he may never have to reveal? The answer is buried somewhere in the chaos of occupied France, a dangerous world of espionage and treachery, assassination and sabotage, collaboration and betrayal, as the heroes and heroines of the French Resistance fight alongside their British allies against the darkness and evil that have overwhelmed Europe.