1939, Cambridge. The opening weeks of the Second World War, and the first blackout - The Great Darkness - envelops the city. Detective Inspector Eden Brooke, and wounded hero of the Great War, takes his nightly dip in the cool waters of the Cam. Sirens wail and yet in the Phoney War the enemy never comes. But daylight reveals a corpse on the riverside, the body torn apart by some unspeakable force. Brooke investigates, calling on the expertise of his fellow 'Nighthawks", all condemned, like him, to a life lived away from the light. Within hours there is another victim slaughtered under cover of the Great Darkness. War has many casualties , but what links these crimes of the night?