Valerie Stone has two possessions, a vintage Jag and an old watch. She smokes too many French cigarettes, rents a houseboat on the Thames and keeps male admirers at arm's length. Investigating the lucrative and mostly legal, she's been a private detective for the last four years. And before that? Well, that's her business. Money has been tight of late, but a sizable pay-out from an insurance investigation could level things up, at least for a while. When a body is washed up on the south coast, it seems a straightforward case of death by misadventure. That is until she finds herself blackmailed by a covert organisation looking into the same incident. Silence mixed with misinformation leads Valerie, and those around her, into a very dirty storm.