Summer 1948 London swelters amid post-war reconstruction, while continued rationing and the black-market fuel the rising crime wave and the empires of gangland bosses are protected by corruption and bribery. During a party in Clapham a student nurse from the South London Hospital for Women and Children dies in a fall from a balcony. Is it an accident as the local police believe? Or something more sinister? A newly qualified detective constable is asked by the nurse's friends to investigate and before long they are all drawn into the criminals' deadly games, as gangsters jostle for territory and power. With the solution almost within their grasp, their lives are threatened and one of them faces a dreadful fate. Can the others find her before it's too late? And what is the truth about A Death in the Afternoon