Her husband's body is burned so badly he can't be identified. But Ann Forest knows the dismembered hand is not that of her husband. She hopes to find him and say sorry, but someone is trying to kill him.Bill Forest feels confused and betrayed. He wants to slip into a new life echoing a nostalgic past and doesn't want to be found. But his wealthy father is dying and he is the favoured heir unless his father's disaffected colleague or his dissolute brother get to him first. But then as Rolan Nazet, a French detective and Brough Moore, his English counterpart discover, nothing is quite what it seems.