This is a sparkling whodunnit in the best Anne Morice style: the action takes place in and around a stately home of extreme hideousness and ostentation where murder strikes at that normally non-violent and most English institution, the garden fête.

This particular fête is being given by a millionaire tycoon in aid of the local conservation society; it has all the traditional amusements such as bowling for a pig, dart throwing, and fortune-telling, and it also has a minor celebrity to declare it open in the person of Tessa Crichton, who will already be well known to readers of this author's previous books. Tessa's detective inspector husband is not present at the time and she is unable to resist this chance to do a bit of on-the-spot investigation of her own, especially as the police are building up a damaging case against someone she considers to be innocent.

There are plenty of suspects and plenty of motives; nobody shows much inclination to tell the whole truth and Tessa's involvement becomes more personal and more dangerous when another corpse is discovered soon afterwards.