London, 1943. Despite the deployment of his father to North Africa, the near constant threat of Nazi air raids, and the day-to-day hardships caused by rationing, thirteen-year-old Derek has managed to withstand the worst of World War II more or less unscathed.

The war finally hits home, literally, when a German “land mine” destroys the roof of their house, and Derek and his mother are forced to live with his grandparents. Then Derek discovers that his backyard air raid shelter has been taken over by a suspicious man who claims to be a British double agent. The visitor’s true identity and intentions prove to be an irresistible mystery to the schoolboy and his friends.

Best known as a writer of award-winning detective fiction, including the Charlie Salter mysteries, Eric Wright has also written a comic novel (Moodies Tale) and Always Give a Penny to a Blind Man, his 1999 memoir which was nominated for the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction. (The first chapter of that memoir first appeared in The New Yorker.) Eric helped to set up and was the first director of the publishing program at Ryerson University. He lives in Toronto.

Eric Wright's profile page

“It is unabashedly autobiographical … when I read the final paragraph I couldn’t help but think Eric was writing about himself, and the experience we have as we grow older, of trying to connect with our past even though the reality of the present impedes us. I found it very moving and I’m glad he was still doing what he loved.”

Maureen Jennings, author of the Detective Murdoch series