From an Edgar Award-winning British crime novelist, this unsettling homicide investigation features the unorthodox French detective Henri Castang.

On a sultry summer night in a French provincial city, Insp. Henri Castang is summoned from his office at the Police Judiciaire to the site of a triple murder. The killer? A husband who came home unexpectedly to discover his wife and daughter in bed with another man. A crime of passion? Perhaps. Except the murderer in question, wealthy financier Gilbert La Touche, is cool and remote. His confession is as factual and bloodless as the crime is violent and deeply disturbing. As a detective, Castang must play by the rules to protect himself. But for an unconventional cop like Castang, that is virtually impossible. After all, there's more to murder than a few corpses and a killer, and Castang will follow every twist until he gets to the heart of the evil at hand.

Praise for Nicolas Freeling

"Nicolas Freeling . . . liberated the detective story from page-turning puzzler into a critique of society and an investigation of character." --The Daily Telegraph

"Freeling rewards with his oblique, subtly comic style." --Publishers Weekly