As the story "Blackham's Wimpey" reveals, Westall has a very strong affinity for the period of World War II. His first novel, The Machine-Gunners, about a group of children caught up in the action of the war in England, is still considered by most readers and critics to be his masterpiece. Two other works—a novel, Fathom Five, and a short story collection, The Haunting of Chas McGill and Other Stories—portray the further adventures of characters from his first novel. Yet more recently, Westall has used the World War II as backdrop for not only fictional works— Blitzcat, The Kingdom by the Sea, and Echoes of War, for example—but for an oral history of the period as well: Children of the Blitz: Memories of Wartime Childhood.

As in several of the stories in Break of Dark, Westall is preoccupied with...