In this absorbing novel the author takes three murders. In each case the victim is a prostitute in a northern city, the murderer's methods identical. The police suspect one of their own number, an officer with a taste for commercial sex who was on the scene very early after the first two bodies had been discovered. He is convicted and locked up. Then comes the third murder, with the obvious strong suggestion that the condemned man must be innocent. Thus is presented the legal quandary with which this novel concerns itself.