A policeman is murdered--stabbed during
a nuclear protest march in the rain
drenched streets of the northern English
town of Eastvale. Any of a hundred or more
demonstrators could have plunged the knife
into Police Constable Edwin Gill, an unlikable
man, by all accounts. But who had the
motive? Who among the crowd even knew
the unfortunate Gill? Was the knife meant
for Gill the person, or Gill the policeman?
Banks, who loves a good meal, the opera,
and his wife, not necessarily in that order,
may wish for the classic locked-room case,
with just a few suspects under controlled
circumstances, but he's confronted with a
situation of quite a different kind.
And to make matters worse, he's not even
in charge of the investigation. A former
colleague from Banks's London days,
Superintendent Richard "Dirty Dick"
Burgess, comes north to direct the inquiries
for supposedly political reasons. A selfish
and ambitious man, of whom Banks has unpleasant
memories, Burgess seems at times
almost more intent on destroying Banks's
career than on solving the murder.