M.C. Beaton's indomitable heroine, Agatha Raisin, is feeling miserable and rejected by the world. She has recently lost her husband, not to another woman, but to God. At this very moment, James Lacey is in France, training to take holy orders at a monastery. To escape the dreariness of her Cotswold cottage, Agatha takes a plane to a remote island in the South Pacific. There she observes a couple - a bearded man and a blond girl - but senses something is wrong, and the girl later turns up drowned. Upon returning home, Agatha comes upon another strange drowning of a pretty young blonde. The police say suicide, but Agatha suspects murder. With the help of her handsome new neighbor, she sets out to prove the police wrong.