Commander Adam Dagliesh is given the job of setting up the Sensitive Crimes Squad, and faces an immediate challenge when Government Minister Sir Paul Berowne consults him about threatening letters. Soon Berowne's strange behaviour is alarming his associates and his aristocratic family.

Threatened by anonymous letters that link him to the drowning of an out-of-work actress, Sir Paul Berowne has resigned from the government, quarrelled with his family, and taken refuge in a seedy London church.

The bizarre death of Sir Paul Berowne has brought his family's problem out into the open as Dalgliesh questions the household to try and determine whether it was murder or suicide.