A sleepy Yorkshire village, a lonely moorland road, a horrifying discovery. Into this, Michael Sutton introduces Inspector Cowley from Yorkshire CID. He takes up the trail from an abandoned body to Wood End, a typical rural community whose characters - homely or wholesome, secretive or self-opinionated - he must interview, sending him from the Dog and Gun to the stolen-car racketeers in the backstreets of York, and from St Dominic's church to the seedy sex scene of Amsterdam's red-light district. When Sonia Jones is murdered on a North Yorkshire moor, all eyes turn to her cuckolded boyfriend, Bruce Williams. He has a motive to kill, but wasn't the more obvious target the fellow student he caught in bed with her? Other fingers point to Martin Blake, particularly when DNA tests identify Sonia's blood on his golf club. Yet, thanks to Polly Parker living up to her nosy surname, Martin has an alibi. Only one thing is for sure: a murderer is on the loose.