When Adam Bishop, a middle-aged self-made man in the building trade, is cruelly murdered at his London home, Detective Inspector Ed Newson has a hunch that the crime has been committed by a psychopath who has killed before.

He links up the new case with a number of older, unsolved ones, and a certain pattern emerges: It turns out that each victim was a bully many years ago when they went to school, and that they have now been killed in exactly the same way as they used to torture their peers.

Although successful in his job, when it comes to his private life Edward Newson is a lonely, sex-starved man secretly in love with his assistant, Natasha.

When Helen Smart posts a long account of how back at school she was forced by Christine Copperfield to stuff a tampon down her throat the murderer is supplied with one more story on which he or she might act.

Jane Jakeman of The Independent said the book has "an obvious solution" and criticized the sexual aspects of the storyline saying that "Elton relentlessly exploits every crude possibility".