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