January 2000

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Executioner Solomon Straw has retired as the book begins, leaving his ropes and his assumed name behind to find peace as a country pub owner with his wife Judith and their infant son. The long series of related events preceding his return to normalcy and his given name, Jeremiah (Jem) Bembo, form the body of the book.

Raised with his cousin Will in a family of farmers descended from a famous actor, Jem is ever reserved, while Will yearns for the glitter and patter of the music hall. When the two compete for the affections of young Judith, her choice of the more solid Jem proves a bone of contention for decades. The war (WWII) changes everything, as a German air raid brings a plane down on the Bembo greenhouses, destroying them and burying a piece of flying glass in newlywed Jem's eye. Shocked at the murder of the badly wounded German pilot by his neighbours, Jem vows to become the most decent and efficient of executioners, even at the cost of his feelings for Judith.

Jem successfully combines his life of quietly growing fruit and vegetables which Judith sells at the local market, with his regular duties as hangman, travelling around Britain. But years later, when Danny Dancer steps onto the scaffold for killing a rival in the hopeless pursuit of a local girl, Jem errs in his meticulous procedure, shaken in part by having delivered his firstborn himself only two days before. Then he learns to his horror not only that he has executed an innocent man, but also that his earlier rivalry has a bearing on these more recent events.

Jem's story and that of the local love triangle which leads to Danny's conviction are told in the framework of a murder-mystery which weaves the two together in an enjoyable book.