Clara Brownacre’s life is shattered when she discovers her husband David, a popular history lecturer, has been shot dead on their doorstep. Who could have done such a thing? There is one clue – a newspaper article he is holding about a girl who died after swallowing an ecstasy tablet – but the police are unable to connect the two deaths, and Clara, heartbroken from her loss and the chief suspect in the murder, decides to investigate the matter. It is a difficult, not to say dangerous, undertaking. Her relationship with her friends, her daughter Lily’s well-being, not least the small detail of her own safety, are all in jeopardy as she unearths far more about her husband than she could possibly have imagined.