A letter from a vicar in Norfolk leads DDI Hardcastle and DS Marriott on the road to a shocking and macabre discovery . . .

One rainy morning in March 1927, Divisional Detective Inspector Ernest Hardcastle of the Metropolitan Police is summoned to the office of the Chief Constable CID at New Scotland Yard. Frederick Wensley has received a letter from a Reverend Percy Stoner in Norfolk, convinced that his nephew, Captain Guy Stoner, has been murdered. He recently received a letter, supposedly from Guy, claiming that there had been a fire at his farm in Ditton, Surrey, and asking for money.

Assigned the case, Hardcastle and Detective Sergeant Charles Marriott travel to Ditton, where they make a shocking discovery, and are soon drawn into a shady world of deception, fraud, ex-army officers and West End nightclubs, navigating a labyrinth of twists and turns in their determination to see justice served.