In The Heat of the Day, Elizabeth Bowen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bowen) brilliantly recreates the tense and dangerous atmosphere of London during the bombing raids of World War II. Many people have fled the city, and those who stayed behind find themselves thrown together in an odd intimacy born of crisis. Stella Rodney is one of those who chose to stay. But for her, the sense of impending catastrophe becomes acutely personal when she discovers that her lover, Robert, is suspected of selling secrets to the enemy, and that the man who is following him wants Stella herself as the price of his silence. Caught between these two men, not sure whom to believe, Stella finds her world crumbling as she learns how little we can truly know of those around us.
Playwright and script writer Harold Pinter wrote an adaptation (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0126333/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1) for television directed by Christopher Morahan in 1989, starring Patricia Hodge as Stella, Michael York as Robert and Michael Gambon as Harrison.
First published 1949.
336 pages in Vintage Classics paperback edition
ISBN 978-0099276463
Elizabeth Bowen