Scotland Yard's Richard Jury and his sidekick Melrose Plant converge on a northern fishing village to hunt down a wily killer.

Detective Richard Jury is back in the 16th novel in Martha Grimes' extraordinary New York Times bestselling series—now enmeshed in a series of strange crimes and disappearances, and an age-old tragedy that consumes his sidekick Melrose Plant....

"Chew on this," says Melrose Plant to Richard Jury, who's in the hospital being driven crazy by Hannibal, a nurse who likes to speculate on his chances for survival. Jury could use a good story, preferably one not ending with his own demise. Plant tells Jury of something he overheard in The Grave Maurice, a pub near the hospital. A woman told an intriguing story about a girl named Nell Ryder, granddaughter to the owner of the Ryder Stud Farm in Cambridgeshire,...

Richard Jury considers the authenticity of a fantastical tale, told by a stranger and fellow patron at the Old Wine Shades pub in London, about a string theory scientist's wife, son, and dog, who disappeared without a trace nine months earlier.

Jury investigates the death of a young escort who has been murdered behind a local pub. The only witness is the establishment's black cat, who gives neither crook nor clue as to the girl's identity or her killer's.