Hired to watch over a death threatened actress, the candid young private detective Cordelia Gray is caught up within an intricate play within a play chilled and shadowed by the dead hand of the past. Each of the guests at the country house party has a motive and a cue for murder - and one of them will kill.

The year is 2021. For twenty-five years no child has been born. Nor will there be any more children for infertility has spread like a plague and the human race faces extinction. Under the despotic rule of Xan Lyppiatt, the Warden of England, the young are violent and the old despairing. Theo Faron, an Oxford historian and cousin of the Warden, leads a solitary, self absorbed life in this ominous atmosphere. But when he is approached by a group of dissenters, Theo is involved in unimaginable horrors and faced with agonizing choices that may change the future of mankind

Venetia Aldridge QC is a distinguished barrister. When she agrees to defend Garry Ashe, accused of the brutal murder of his aunt, it is one more opportunity to triumph in her career as a criminal lawyer. But Regina VS Ashe initiates events both frightening and unpredictable. Just four weeks later, Miss Aldridge is found dead in her Middle Temple Chambers. Commander Adam Dalgliesh, called in to investigate, finds motives for murder among the clients Venetia has defended, her professional colleagues, her family - even her lover.