A perfect execution

In the Vale of Aylesbury, near Oxford, during World War II, a young man named Jeremiah Bembo is shaken to his core by the sight of a downed German pilot - mortally wounded, taunted by villagers, hanging from a tree. This horrible vision of death effects a profound change in him, and presents a kind of calling: to become a benevolent executioner, a figure of succor and compassion in men's final hours. In time he is England's swiftest, most expert hangman, a revered and dreaded legend known as Solomon Straw. A Perfect Execution is the story of Jeremiah, of Solomon, of a man so moved by death…