KIRKUS REVIEW
With none of the brash idiom or momentum of his earlier books, this is a clever, occasionally indirect study of an average man at a time of emotional seachange. For Vincent Sloate, delayed outside of Halifax during the war when his ship's convoy orders are overdue, is attracted- without acknowledging that attraction- to a Mrs. Neville, a passenger who remains a total stranger to him. But during a night spent ashore, and his accidental intrusion in her room where he meets the purser, Muddison, his suspicion of their love affair and the jealousy it prompts exposes his interest in Mrs. Neville, from which her sudden death releases him. The sideplay here, in some adroit observation of the stewards- Ade and Tighe- and their eager malice; of Roland- a radio man with an impulsive curiosity; of brusque to rude Muddton, fills out the interlude which is reticently provocative.