Like father like son. But heredity seems to have gone a gene too far when Pal Maciver's suicide in a locked room exactly mirrors that of his father ten years earlier. In each case accusing fingers point towards Pal's stepmother, the beautiful enigmatic Kay Kafka. But she turns out to have a formidable champion, Mid-Yorkshire's own super-heavyweight, Detective Superintendent Andrew Dalziel. DCI Peter Pascoe, nominally in charge of the investigation, finds he is constantly body-checked by his superior as he tries to disentangle the complex relationships of the Maciver family.