A poet who is also a policeman infiltrates the Central Anarchist Council, whose seven members are named for the days of the week, and finds himself elected Thursday. Chesterton subtitled it a nightmare and meant it literally, having written it out of the black stretch of his early twenties. Every chase leads somewhere the reader did not expect, and the last chapter is not a detective story at all. Ninety-nine plates of London squares, Breton coasts, and wartime fields by painters including Spencer Gore and William Orpen run alongside the chase.
