[9] Before he began writing he was employed in senior management at various gas companies, but after the Second World War he obtained a scholarship to study zoology at Balliol College, Oxford.
[11] The villagers of Kergwyns are baffled by the bizarre shooting of an attractive local woman, the only thing stolen from the scene being her left shoe and stocking, exposing a deformity in her foot.
An auburn-haired young woman turns up naked and strangled in a seedy hotel room by the docks, her face savagely beaten after death.
The discovery of a thousand pounds stashed underneath some clothing, and of expensive luggage indicating more class than her present surroundings, exacerbates the mystery of her murder, and Superintendent Wycliffe finds himself drawn to the investigation, interrupting his seaside holiday so that he can make inquiries of his own.
Wycliffe is not convinced of his guilt and soon scratches away at the surface of the supposedly closeknit community, exposing an undercurrent of fear and hatred.
In the course of his solo investigation he uncovers connections with an old school trip, a youth hostel and a cruel practical joke played on a lonely student.
While he is taking a leisurely Sunday stroll along an estuary Wycliffe stumbles across a service revolver with one recently fired chamber and becomes embroiled in a world of shady art robberies, crooked dealers, a suspicious suicide and the hunt for a missing yacht.
The Beales, a reclusive family living in Ashill House on the edge of Dartmoor, consist of Simon, an old man entirely withdrawn from active life, Nicholas and Gertrude, perpetually hitting the bottle and playing war games, and the painter Edward, who takes long walks on the moor in search of artistic inspiration.
The reclusive writer David Cleeve has been receiving mysterious warnings in the form of a single playing card, the Jack of Diamonds.