The story is set in the year 1957 in a very elite public school, Blackleigh, in Yorkshire. However, all is not well at the school. It's a hotbed of emotional problems and seething, hidden antagonisms and hatreds.
The teachers were not in charge, the people who were really in charge were the prefects, who ruled the school with an iron fist within an iron glove. Meting out violence to any junior pupils who they took against.
Jonathan Simon is 16, in his third year. He is conscious that his Jewishness is held against him and he is mocked and derided for the birthmark on his face.
The unofficial "official" rules of the school forbids snitching. The staff have no power, including, perhaps especially, the new temporary headmaster, Mr Wood, who is ineffectual and very, very weak.
So who does wield the power at Blackleigh? The senior pupils who are the prefects and who are not backward in coming forward with violence against any pupil they deem to deserve it for any reason or no reason.
Into this educational maelstrom comes Bobby Stuart who is an American transfer student. He has his own anxieties about being accepted so it's perhaps not unnatural that they gravitate toward each other and become friends.
However, trouble comes in the form of three very vicious and ruthless House Seniors, Gabriel, Hausman and Murray. They have gathered around them a coterie of sycophantic, dedicated followers.
But the Seniors are not without problems within their own ranks. Rivalries, internal differences and when one of them gets a gun things start to get very, very complicated and very, very dangerous indeed.
An exceptionally well-written book crafted by a master storyteller it brings to life a time when public schools were capable of being quite nasty places indeed.
It's published by the Bookguild at £8.99.
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