Recently widowed and inspired by a boyhood fascination with Sherlock Holmes, the middle-aged Inspector Gilles Maintenon of the Surete is on a walking vacation of Dartmoor when he stumbles upon death in mysterious circumstances.

When a plane crashes but the pilot has been dead just a little too long, Gilles becomes suspicious. When the woman he is falling in love with is brutally murdered, Gilles swears that he will never rest until the case is solved, the killer is caught, and justice is done. With a vein of dark humour running through it, the book deals with themes of loss, grief, remorse, and the unexpected consequences of the simplest choices. With one of the most original cave scenes in recent fiction, Louis Bertrand Shalako pulls out all the stops.