Set in Scotland in the early 1920s, Dandy Gilver, a well-to-do woman caught between Victorian mores and the exhilarating sense of freedom that followed WW I, is bored with her husband at home and her children away at school until a friend asks her to help recover the Duffy family diamonds stolen from a country house after an elaborate armistice ball.

"It's the breezy Scottish summer of 1936 and aristocratic sleuth Dandy Gilver, along with trusted colleague Alec Osborne, has been called to solve the strange case of the Cramond Ferrywoman, on the Firth of Forth. From their cheerless digs in a local stately home, Dandy and Alec track Vesper Kemp, the ferrywoman, to a tiny tidal island. She seems to have lost her mind, roaming the beaches in rags, ranting about snakes and mercury. What is even more...

"Something sinister is afoot in the streets of Dundee, when a puppeteer is found murdered behind his striped Punch and Judy stand, as children sit cross-legged drinking ginger beer. At once, Dandy Gilver's seemingly-innocuous investigation into plagiarism takes a darker turn. The gruesome death seems to be inextricably bound to the gloomy offices of Doig's Publishers, its secrets hidden in the real stories behind their girls' magazines The Rosie Cheek...