P.D. James's Headstrong heroine Cordelia Gray (Baxendale) returns as she plunges once more into the murky world of crime.

Cordelia has resolved to make her mark on the ramshackle detective agency she inherited from her boss, and develop her career as a private detective. But there's an unexpected development-- she finds herself pregnant. Still she is determined that the prospect of motherhood will not affect her ambitions.

The fiercely independent young detective matched wits with a pair of murderous thugs and snares an unlikely killer with a connection to Scotland Yard, proof to one and all that her profession is hardly an unsuitable job for a woman or a mother.