London, 1955. When crime writer Donald Langham�s literary agent asks for his help in sorting out �a delicate matter�, little does Langham realize what he�s getting himself into. For a nasty case of blackmail leads inexorably to murder as London�s literary establishment is rocked by a series of increasingly bizarre deaths. With three members of the London Crime Writers� Association coming to sudden and violent ends, what at first appeared to be a series of suicides looks suspiciously like murder � and there seems to be something horribly familiar about the various methods of despatch. With the help of his literary agent�s assistant, the delectable Maria Dupre, Langham finds himself drawing on the skills of his fictional detective hero as he hunts a ruthless and fiendishly clever killer � a killer with old scores to settle.