After a puppeteer is found murdered behind his Punch and Judy stand, Dandy Gilver's investigation into plagiarism takes a darker turn. In this 15th case (after The Turning Tide), the death is somehow linked to the gloomy offices of Doig's Publishers, its secrets hidden in the real stories behind their girls' magazines The Rosie Cheek and The Freckle. On meeting a mysterious professor from St Andrews, Dandy and her colleague Alex Osbourne find that a troubled history has begun to repeat itself.