After wealthy doctor David Rogers turns up dead in the hallway of his home, Bill Slider and his firm are thrown into a deeper mystery and discover that nothing is as it seems when they start their investigation into the doctor's death.

When the strangled corpse of a nearly seventeen-year-old girl, a bright, gifted student, talented artist, and musician respected by her teachers and peers at an excellent all-girls church school, is discovered in a London park near her home, dressed like a tart, Slider and his team investigate.

When Melanie Hunter uncharacteristically disappears, the men in her life come under suspicion. It soon becomes clear that there are many secrets in Melanie's past. Bill Slider and his team are investigating and they will have to unravel lies, half-truths and deceptions to find the answer to their questions.

"A middle-aged man jumps under a tube train at Shepherd's Bush station, and a teenage girl is killed in a hit-and-run, in a country lane puzzlingly far from her home on the White City Estate: two unrelated incidents which occupy DCI Bill Slider and his team during a slack period. At least it's a change of speed after the grind of domestics, burglaries and Community Liaison. But links to a cold case--another dead teenager, pulled out of the River Thames--create...

The woman lies dead at the foot of the stairs. It's obvious what happened: she tripped and fell. But PC D'Arblay, called to the dilapidated West London villa by an anonymous tip-off, can't shake the feeling that's exactly what someone wants him to think. It was the deep head wound that killed her - but her dying fall left no blood trail, so what was it she hit her head on? DCI Slider, of the Shepherd's Bush murder squad, is soon convinced D'Arblay...