This novel, published after Innes's departure from Australia in 1945, displays the 'fruits of his recent Australian exile ... in a most relellant aspect. The arrival of Australian cousins ... at the baronial seat of Hazelwood in England, and the past dealings in Australia of those cousins and the baronet, Sir George Simney, who is murdered in the course of the novel, is the peg upon which the story is hung.' (Roslyn Russell,
Literary Links, p. 178)
