Inspector Wexford is called in when the body of a young woman, strangled with her own silk scarf, turns up in the Montfort family vault in a London cemetery.

"Carly Chase is still traumatized ten days after being in a fatal traffic accident which kills a teenage student from Brighton University. Then she receives news that turns her entire world into a living nightmare. The drivers of the other two vehicles involved have been found tortured and murdered. Now Detective Superintendent Roy Grace of the Sussex Police force issues a stark and urgent warning to Carly: She could be next. The student had deadly...

Friday the thirteenth of May was most unlucky day for Sergeant Caleb Martin of Kingsmarkham CID. That day he confiscated a replica gun from his son's school briefcase and lost his life in a bank robbery -- the first link in a chain of events which led to a series of deaths. When three people are discovered shot at Tancred House, Chief Inspector Wexford suspects a connection between the two apparently unrelated crimes. But only the seventeen-year-old...