While investigating the murder of a well-respected barrister who was found dead at a seedy hotel in Crystal Palace, Detective Inspector Gemma James and her partner, Detective Sergeant Melody Talbot, begin to question everything they think they know about their world and those they trust most.

Supt. Kincaid of Scotland Yard investigates the death of a lady living in his building. Ill with cancer, she asked friends to help her commit suicide, but Kincaid suspects the morphine that killed her was administered by someone intent on murder, not euthanasia.

When a body is discovered floating in a Thames river lock one dreary morning, Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and Sergeant Gemma James are summoned from Scotland Yard to Chiltern Hills. The dead man is Connor Swann, son-in-law of two of London's most renowned opera personalities. And prints on the corpse's neck suggest that Swann was strangled. As Duncan and Gemma explore the quiet woods above the Thames and the flamboyant world of London opera in search...