Breaking away from the traditional country-house setups of previous novels, Connington shifts the action entirely to the English suburbs. The investigation kicks off with the discovery of a body in a flat, which unravels a messy web of secrets, including a victim who was a bigamist. The investigation navigates an unusually diverse cast of local suburban characters:
An ambitious young policeman A naive, opportunistic journalist An unhappily married Frenchwoman An elderly clerk dreaming of foreign travel
