[1][2] It is the thirteenth in her long-running series featuring Chief Inspector MacDonald of Scotland Yard, a Golden Age detective who relies on standard police procedure to solve his cases.

Reviewing it for the Times Literary Supplement, John Everard Gurdon noted "The plot is intricate and the characterisation sure, with one exception.

The police are called in after they discover a suitcase belonging to the missing man and the blackmailer, an Alsatian sculptor named Debrette has himself vanished.

MacDonald is convinced this is a murder case and begins a tortuous search of the rambling building, eventually finding a headless and handless corpse ingenuously hidden in a wall.

A further series of accidents and incidents to various other figures involved in the case throws doubt on the stories and motives of various suspects, particularly Attleton's actress wife Sybilla and her stockbroker lover.