A tough, unsentimental novel of war and survival, for older readers.
Following the outbreak of war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, Western
Europe has been overrun by the Red Army, and the south-eastern corner of
England occupied. Renewed hostilities five years later result in a
biological weapon being dropped on Leicester. Told largely in flashback
twelve years after the attack, the story follows Darren, an ordinary boy
who gets caught up in the renewed conflict, and becomes one of the few
survivors of the 'germ bomb'. His struggle for survival amidst the
anarchy and devastation of the contaminated Midlands, now cordoned off
from the rest of the country, is related with honesty and a direct,
matter-of-fact realism.