"Twelve people sat down for dinner at Strontfield Park, William Fent's ancestral home. Thirteen would have been most unlucky. For the host, however, the evening could not have been unluckier. By midnight he was dead--killed instantly when his motorcar smashed into another on a bad bit of road. The problem for Detective Inspector C.D. Sloan was the autopsy. The victim, it seemed, was about to die in any event. Along with the cold cucumber soup, crown...

In the last lazy days of summer, the merciless two-week heat wave is the biggest story in Washington, D.C. But the weather is finally knocked off the front pages when a young woman is found strangled to death-a priest's white silk amice pulled taut around her throat. Pinned near the scarf is a note that simply reads her sins are forgiven her. It is a chilling crime, made even more terrifying when it is followed by a second murder... and then a third....

DCI Fenwick investigates the shadowy goings-on at Wainwright Enterprises that culminated in the murder of the firm's financial controller.