When Matthew Glynn, a respectable bookseller, is found bludgeoned and strangled, Wycliffe is mystified. Why would anyone want to kill him, and in such a brutal manner? But a look at Glynn’s background reveals family tensions. Alfred Glynn, an eccentric recluse, has held a grudge against his brother for years, and the older brother, Maurice, argued bitterly with Matthew over the sale of family land. Add to this a discontented son, valuable documents in the bookseller’s safe, and the mysterious, still unexplained disappearance of Matthew’s wife years earlier, and Wycliffe is facing one of the most impenetrable cases of his career.
