'Her [Gwendoline Butler's] inventiveness never seems to flag; and the singular atmosphere of her books, compounded of jauntiness and menace, remains undiminished' Patricia Craig, TLS A visit to the riverside apartment of the long retired former prime minister, Richard Lavender, is to have startling consequences for John Coffin. For it transpires that the old man, nearing the end of his life, has a confession to make: he is the son of a serial killer. He tells Coffin how, as a boy, he helped to bury one of his father's victims. Feeling death is near, he wants to repair and reclaim the past - with Coffin's help. Unsure whether Lavender is caught up in fantasy or telling the truth, Coffin agrees to investigate and appoints Chief Inspector Phoebe Astley to the task. But then a young woman is found murdered on a foggy November night, and all too soon the sins of the past and present come together in a terrifying denouement.