Returning to Edinburgh's most eccentric apartment house, the creator of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency and the Isabel Dalhousie series looks in at 44 Scotland Street and finds the precocious Bertie contemplating a summer without his mother Irene's domineering presence. While his father Stuart reconnects with an old acquaintance over peppermint tea, Bertie takes his friend Ranald Braveheart Macpherson to the circus. But their trip to the big top becomes rather more than the pleasant diversion they were hoping for.