The discovery of one of a set of six toy soldiers: Grant, Von Hindenberg, Napoleon, Burgoyne, Haig and Wellington at various sites of murder provide a theme for this installment of DCI Lamb's World War II mysteries. It begins with the shooting of Ruth Asquith, a conscripted worker on the prisoner-of-war camp for Italians, that is outside Winsted. Lamb and others are called to the cemetery where the vicar, Gerald Winberly and his wife play a part in the overall story. He is a serial adulterer and is being blackmailed into a relationship with Doris White who saw Wilhemina his wife kill the woman just to muck up Gerald's life. The police, however, do not discover this until the very end, almost incidently. They believe she was shot by someone who was working with her to forge, namely Lawrence Tigue, petrol rations and sell them to the IRA. The real name of Ruth was Maureen Tigue, another of the Tigue family who are ciminal and evil. Additionally Lamb feels overcome with confusion and frustration as the bodies of three small children are found as the construction of the camp is done, on the site of the farm where the Tigues had lived. Algernon, Lawrence's brother, as a young boy murdered other children, and it was covered up by the policeman at the time, in exchange for the sexual favors of their mother. Two the boys were twins, and had thought to have been spirited off by their father, and their mother later committing suicide.
As Lamb, with the help of his daughter Vera, who he has enlisted as a driver, since his ankle is injured, and Rivers and Wallace proceeds to solve the various murders, including those of the long dead children and their mother, Wallace and Vera find an attraction in one another. Vera plays a prominent part in saving the lives of her father, Wallace and a hostage that Tigue had taken hoping to get away. Convoluted though the story was, it was very entertaining and fast.