A would-be politician is found battered to death in the kitchen of his Oxfordshire home. His wife's alibi is full of holes and there's another woman in the picture. His seemingly mild-mannered political rival can't seem to place himself at the time of death either. DI Hillary Greene is called in to get to the bottom of this perplexing murder. She doesn't think the prime suspect is as guilty as everyone thinks. Just as she's about to make a breakthrough, everything is turned upside down by a fatal development in another case she is working on . . . Can Hillary find the murderer and survive a brush with one of Oxford's most dangerous criminals at the same time?