Alan Conway is a bestselling crime writer. His editor, Susan Ryeland, has worked with him for years, and she's intimately familiar with his detective, Atticus Pund, who solves mysteries disturbing sleepy English villages. Alan's traditional formula pays homage to queens of classic British crime such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. It has proved hugely successful. So successful that Susan must continue to put up with his troubling behaviour if she wants to keep her job. When Susan receives Alan's latest manuscript, in which Atticus Pund investigates a murder at Pye Hall, an English manor house, she has no reason to think it will be any different from the others. There will be dead bodies, a cast of intriguing suspects and plenty of red herrings and clues. But the more Susan reads, the more she realises that there's another story hidden in the pages of the manuscript--one of ambition, jealousy and greed--and that soon it will lead to murder.