Richard Jury is supposed to be on holiday when the telephone call comes. And in any case, what has sudden death on American soil to do with an English police superintendent? But when the victim turns out to be British by birth, and to have a distant connection with Jury's old acquaintance Lady Cray, he reluctantly pries himself loose from his pint at the Jack and Hammer. Enlisting the aid of aristocratic Melrose Plant, and accompanied by Sergeant Wiggins (fortified against the unknown and menacing germs of intercontinental travel), Jury crosses the Atlantic.
Baltimore turns out to have many attractions - not the least of which is avant-garde novelist Ellen Taylor, last encountered in Yorkshire at the Old Silent inn. Ellen is painfully engaged in finishing her new book, but takes time out to introduce the trio to the delights of the city - football, Poe, Bromo-Seltzer, and a bar called The Horse You Came In On.
Literary larceny, dubious descendants, football franchises. Murder. These are the elements in a complex puzzle set by Martha Grimes in Jury's twelfth case, marked by the riches of characterization, wit, and suspense her readers look forward to. In the words of the first advance review, from Kirk us, "Nobody will rise from this table still hungry."