During a hot summer in North Devon, Detective Matthew Venn is called out to a rural crime scene at the home of a group of artists. What he finds is an elaborately staged murder: Dr. Nigel Yeo has been fatally stabbed with a shard of one of his glassblower daughter's broken vases. Matthew is especially unnerved, though, to find that she is a close friend of Jonathan, his husband. Then another body is found—killed in a similar way—and in this sequel to The Long Call, Matthew is soon embroiled in a case that is dangerously close to home.