Bill Slider and his team face a mystery, when an unidentifiable man appears to have committed suicide but all signs point to murder

A boiling-hot August day, and a handsome young man is found dead in his bath, exsanguinated. Suicide is not, strictly speaking, a detective inspector’s business, but Bill Slider’s colleague takes one look at the body and calls in his boss. ‘It don’t look right to me, guv,’ is Detective Sergeant Hollis’s opinion. ‘But I can’t quite put my finger on it.’

As Bill Slider investigates, he reluctantly has to agree: the man’s poky flat is too tidy, for one thing, and smelling of fresh emulsion rather than, say, feet. That’s not to mention the method of death: a single slash to the left jugular, when evidence soon proves him to be left-handed. But as Slider and his team try to identify the man – whose personal papers are missing, along with his wallet and keys – it seems that the more they find out about him, the less they really know . . .