It wasn’t the sort of place where anything should happen.

Gurney Close was just a small, newly-built cul-de-sac, three nice houses and a bungalow overlooking the river Wye. None of the people who move in – three married couples and a divorcee – expect anything much to take place, beyond, perhaps, some neighbourhood friendliness. With this in mind, they organize a party to celebrate moving in.

All goes well, a good time is had by everyone, until one of them is found dead the next morning. Lambert and Hook are faced with a baffling crime. For their harmless, normal-seeming victim turns out to have a darker past than they could have suspected – and enemies everywhere, very close to home…