Who poisoned Anna Macmillan with a deadly dose of antimony? Where are the priceless pearls that vanished during a country house weekend? What caused the temperature of a health club sauna to rise so dramatically that its sole occupant was dead within minutes? How was the code to an eminent scientist's high-tech alarm system broken on the very day it was issued?

From the investigations of Detective Inspector C.D. Sloan and his enthusiastic, but not very helpful, Constable Crosby in the not-so-sleepy county of Calleshire to the long lunches of civil servant Henry Tyler in the tranquil environs of London's Mordaunt Club, Catherine Aird's collection of sixteen stories takes the reader through an ingenious selection of crimes and puzzles, full of delightful literary subtleties and fascinating legal and medical twists.