It is 1944. British bomber pilot Bill Carr writes a letter home to his one-year-old daughter Lindy before embarking on a mission to drop supplies to partisans in the mountains of Northern Italy.
He never returns.
Twenty years later, a grown-up Lindy hires former Mosquito pilot Jack Kirby to help find her father's last resting place.
Jack is the perfect man for the job: after being shot down himself over northern Italy in 1944, he joined the Italian partisans in their fight with the retreating Nazis.
But the dark secrets of the past cast a long shadow over the present.
Jack finds old rivalries and the lure of missing Nazi loot have turned his former friends into bitter enemies.
Like a fine, mellow wine, After Midnight yields up its secrets slowly.
As the story flips between 1944 and 1964, the characters begin to take on shape and substance and old betrayals emerge one by one.
A riveting evocation of the chaos, treachery and bloodshed that marked the end of the war in Italy.
Updated: 09:04 Saturday, March 19, 2005
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