"Two years ago, a hostile Prime Minister launched the Monochrome inquiry, an auditing of the British Secret Service 'to investigate historical over-reaching.' Monochrome's mission was to ferret out any hint of misconduct by any MI5 officer--and [allow] Griselda Fleet and Malcolm Kyle, the two civil servants seconded to the project, unfettered access to any and all confidential information in the Service archives in order to do so. But MI5's formidable...

In 1940, eighteen-year old Juliet Armstrong is reluctantly recruited into the world of espionage. Sent to an obscure department of MI5 tasked with monitoring the comings and goings of British Fascist sympathizers, she discovers the work to be by turns both tedious and terrifying. But after the war has ended, she presumes the events of those years have been relegated to the past forever. Ten years later, now a radio producer at the BBC, Juliet is unexpectedly...