Friday the thirteenth of May is the day Sergeant Caleb Martin confiscates a replica gun from his son It is also the day he will lose his life in a bank robbery, and the first link in the chain of events that will lead to a number of deaths When three people are discovered shot at Tancred House, Chief Inspector Wexford comes to believe there is a connection between the two apparently unrelated crimes But only the seventeen-year-old daughter of one of the victims survives to provide the most confusing of clues