The job was hard enough since Halifax became the focal point as the major staging area for the convoys supplying the war effort in England. Robichaud has his hands full dealing with the influx of people looking for work, foreign merchantmen looking for distractions from the perils of convoy duty and servicemen waiting transport across the Atlantic. Compounding his headaches is the growing shortages for affordable housing and the prohibitions on liquor sales in the city. Now he has a murder to deal with.

The dead man with a hole in his head was fished from the water just outside the anti-submarine nets by a local fishing boat. His name was Denny Cafferty, a suspected IRA soldier who fled Ireland and the British Special Branch.

Robichaud and his partner, Pete Duncan, soon find themselves up to their necks with more murders and a homicidal German spy.