The Festival of Noble Selves

In 1945, crime correspondent turned war reporter Harry Flynn comes home from Singapore and takes an unassuming post with the Festival of Britain, a government-backed effort to honor the country's inventiveness and resolve.

He joins a crew of odd colleagues racing to ready the celebration for opening.

When a Frenchwoman vanishes, Flynn is the last person known to have seen her alive, yet he remembers nothing of the night they spent together and soon stands as the chief suspect in her disappearance and possible murder.

Evidence gathers against him until he cannot be sure of his own innocence, and the people nearest the Festival appear to be serving secret purposes of their own.

London puts on a carnival mood as the country sheds the grey shortages of war, even as the event invites Britain to weigh its history against the future it wants.

A former empire is recasting its identity, and some will go far to steer that picture.