Tim Curwen is the ideal customer. But three days after Dido Hoare sells him Charles Dickens's The Haunted Man, her elegant young customer jumps to his death. Not only that: his cheque has bounced. Being as stubborn as the next antiquarian book dealer, Dido sets out to retrieve either the book or her money. Simple? But the book is missing from his flat, and that draws Dido onto a trail from the empty mansion flat to an abandoned house in London's East End, from threat to cover-up, from betrayal to more deaths. Her determination leads her step by step to an unexpected and perilous truth.