Is someone systematically killing the judges of the B.C. bar? At least one has been murdered and several have disappeared. Arthur Beauchamp returns from retirement once again to take on the case, this time defending his former nemesis, backwoods poet Cudworth Brown, and tracking down a mystery novel that Brown’s demented former lawyer has been writing – all this just as his own wife, Margaret, has announced her candidacy for the Green Party in a forthcoming federal by-election.