Hull, 1942. Inspector Ambrose Swift cannot believe the devastation he finds when he is posted the bomb-ravaged city. But for Swift and his two deputies - part-time bare-knuckle boxer Jim 'Little' Weighton and Dales farmer's daughter Kathleen Carver - it's murder, not the war, that's at the forefront of their minds. When a series of sadistic killings is wrongly blamed on locally-stationed black American GIs, Swift, a one-armed former WW1 cavalryman who tours the rubble-strewn city on a white horse, soon discovers these are no ordinary murders. However, for Swift, Weighton and Carver, finding the real killers means putting their own lives at risk.