On the night the Whitebridge Players staged their last ever performance, the idealistic young actors in the company resolved that twenty years on they would return to the same theatre and stage the same play.

But two decades later, old resentments have grown and new jealousies have germinated, and it is a very different company that returns to re-enact the Spanish Tragedy. The cast members all have their axes to grind – and some have clear targets for those axes . . .

It is in this world – where normal rules and standards have no meaning – that DCI Monika Paniatowski finds herself, once a tragedy within the Tragedy has occurred. But how can she uncover the killer’s motive when everyone seemed to want the victim dead? And how can she decide who is telling the truth – when all these people lie for a living?