Isabel, Jamie and Charlie are off to Highland Perthshire to visit an old schoolfriend of Isabel's, who married into a family of wealthy newspaper owners. A few weeks later, the Edinburgh press reports a major art theft from the friend's Highland estate, including a valuable Dutch masterwork that was going to pay the estate tax. In helping her friend and the team of lawyers to negotiate the ethical dilemmas of paying ransom for the painting's return, Isabel will face her first real criminals.