A novel that begins as a quirk or obsession (a 'maggot' in the archaic sense of the word) which found its setting in the second wave of Protestant Dissent in England. It takes shape as a mystery - an investigation of unaccountable motives and deeds - which leads through beguiling paths to a starling vision at its centre.

A young drifter finds more than he bargained for when he agrees to deliver a parcel to an English country house!

Isak Dinesen was the pen-name of Karen Blixen, who was born in Rungsted, Denmark in 1885. After studying art, she married her cousin, Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke. Together they went to Kenya to manage a coffee plantation. After their divorce, she continued to run the plantation until a collapse in the coffee market forced her back to Denmark.

Martin Lynch-Gibbon believes he can possess both a beautiful wife and a delightful lover. But when his wife, Antonia, suddenly leaves him for her psychoanalyst, Martin is plunged into an intensive emotional re-education. Then he meets a woman whose demonic splendour at first repels him and later arouses a consuming and monstrous passion.

Draws the reader, through descriptions of food and cooking, into a world of murder and art. Narrated by Tarquin, an ironist, epicurean and a snob, this novel is constructed around a series of seasonal menus, which unfold his autobiography.

The young women of Nightingale House are there to learn to nurse and comfort the suffering. But when one of the students plays patient in a demonstration of nursing skills, she is horribly, brutally killed. Another student dies equally mysteriously, and it is up to Adam Dalgliesh to unmask a killer.