It's a snowy December night and Jago Tilley is making an unsteady way home from the village pub. He doesn't know that by morning he will be dead!

It falls to DI Sam Kitto, of Devon and Cornwall Police, to investigate the old fisherman's brutal murder, and once again magazine editor, Loveday Ross, finds herself involved in her policeman boyfriend's case.

Suspicion falls on the dead man's disreputable nephew, Billy Travis. But what is his relationship with St Ives gallery owner, Zachariah Paxton-Quinn?

Loveday's boss, Merrick Tremayne, is acting distinctly out of character. Could his strange mood have something to do with her discovery of a burglar rummaging through the magazine's old archive files?

And then there is the glamorous Dutch boutique owner, Sabine De Fries. What is her connection with the Tremayne family?