The unrelenting presence of murder interrupts the bliss of Thomas Ford's honeymoon in June of 1923. Ford, a Detective Chief Inspector from Scotland Yard, is enjoying his honeymoon with his new wife, Victoria, in a remote fishing village in Cornwall when fishermen discover the murdered body of Lord Clarence Danglars Pengriffon tangled in a fishing net. There hasn't been a murder in this village for twenty years, and authorities drag a reluctant Ford into the case.

The authorities and townspeople question who would kill the affable and generous Pengriffon. By all accounts, this talented painter didn't have a single enemy. Was this a murder of passion, or a cold-blooded premeditated crime? As Ford sifts through the shattered remnants of his lordship's life, he finds conflicting clues and shadowy motives leading to vaguely possible suspects, but no hard evidence.

Ford races into the investigation at breakneck speed, determined to crack the case in record time so he can return to his idyllic honeymoon, but the solution remains obstinately hidden. Or could the murdered man himself have left behind the one vital missing clue?

John Rhodes was born during World War II while his father was serving at an RAF Fighter Command airfield. After the war he grew up in London, where, he says, the remnants of bombed-out buildings "served as our adventure playgrounds." A Cambridge University history graduate, he is the author of Infinite Stakes, the sequel to the award-winning Breaking Point.