This novel is set within a single day in February 2003. Henry Perowne is a successful neurosurgeon living in the gathering pessimism of the looming war with Ira... » 

This novel is set within a single day in February 2003. Henry Perowne is a successful neurosurgeon living in the gathering pessimism of the looming war with Iraq. A minor accident in his car brings him into a confrontation with a smalltime thug of whom Perowne can see something is profoundly wrong. When the man visits Perownes home that evening «