The first installment in the Bartlett and Boase Mysteries, a detective series set on the beautiful English Riviera during the 1920s. For fans of Agatha Christie and Golden Age crime fiction.

1921, Falmouth. Inspector George Bartlett is investigating the disappearance of a young girl, and events take a turn for the worse when a woman is found dead, badly mutilated, on a local beach. Bartlett and his assistant, Constable Archibald Boase, soon realise the woman was a local prostitute, Ivy Williams.

The murder investigation leads the men to the wealthy inhabitants of Penvale Manor House A web of illegitimacy, inheritances, and secrecy is uncovered, and soon the hangman's noose is swinging precariously over one of the suspects - but have they got the right person?