It has two main threads: the first one is represented by
Richard Roe, an Auxiliary Fire Service fireman who is stationed in London during the Phoney War and the Blitz, and regularly commutes between the station and his country home.
Equally uncertain is precisely what it means to say that
Richard Roe (Case One) is a vulnerable victim.
The main character,
Richard Roe, finds himself assigned to an Auxiliary Fire Brigade unit headed by Albert Pye, the brother of the woman who kidnaped Roe's son Christopher.
Donna Doe and
Richard Roe are partners in the firm Doe & Roe, CPAs.
And so the question is framed: "When may `we' allow this" or "when may `we' compel that," recognizing that, because we have seen fit to burden the medical aspect of life with legalism and regulation and illimitable, fatuous New Deal paternalism, we must be taken to have adopted the decision that Jane Doe and
Richard Roe might make for themselves.