It is the Edinburgh Festival. People queuing for a lunchtime show witness a road-rage incident - an incident which changes the lives of everyone involved. Jackson Brodie, ex-army, ex-police, ex-private detective, is also an innocent bystander - until he becomes a suspect.

In Edinburgh, 16-year-old Reggie works as a nanny for a GP. But Dr Hunter has gone missing and Reggie seems to be the only person who is worried. Detective Chief Inspector Louise Monroe is also looking for a missing person, unaware that hurtling towards her is an old friend - Jackson Brodie - himself on a journey that becomes fatally interrupted.

Cambridge is sweltering, during an unusually hot summer. Jackson Brodie, former police inspector turned private investigator, has never felt at home in Cambridge, and has a failed marriage to prove it. Surrounded by death, intrigue and misfortune, he attempts to unravel three case histories and begins to realise that everything is connected.

Ruby Lennox was conceived grudgingly by Bunty and born while her father, George, was in the Dog and Hare in Doncaster telling a woman in an emerald dress and a D-cup that he wasn't married. Bunty had never wanted to marry George, but here she was, stuck in a flat above the pet shop in an ancient street beneath York Minster.