Photo by Everett Collection Inc/Alamy Dan Billany was a bestselling author when he was shipped off overseas in the early years of the Second World War. The Opera House Murders had been published by Faber & Faber in 1940 with a striking encomium by none other than TS Eliot: “We introduce Dan Billany as a new writer of thrillers with new thrills… We must leave the reader to discover for himself the connection between grand opera and grand larceny – to say nothing of murder in the first degree.” But the war would make an indelible impression on Billany’s writing....