Detective Superintendent Dalgliesh arrives to spend what he hopes will be a quiet few days at his Aunt Jane’s property in the remote maritime Suffolk hamlet of Monksmere. Other property owners there include the widowed detective novelist Maurice Seton, drama critic Oliver Latham, magazine editor Justin Bryce, romantic novelist Celia Calthrop, the retired R. B. Sinclair - whose three distinguished novels had been published thirty years before - and the crippled Sylvia Kedge who acts as typist and helps around the house for some of these. Jane Dalgliesh is herself a respected ornithologist and her nephew is author of two well-regarded collections of poetry.
