A parcel containing the limbs of a woman is found on the doorstep of a house, now a women's refuge, where Commander John Coffin used to to live. The initials J.C. and a message on the parcel suggest a personal link which is emphasized when Coffin's photo is found in a handbag near the scene.

'[Gwendoline Butler's] inventiveness never seems to flag; and the singular atmosphere of her books, compounded of jauntiness and menace, remains undiminished' Patricia Craig, TLS Everyone has a few ghost in their lives, especially John Coffin, Chief Commander of the Second City of London's Police. He had thought all his were laid to rest though, and, newly recovered from a gunshot wound, is hoping for a calmer life with his actress wife Stella Pinero. But he is soon to learn how wrong he is when a parcel containing dismembered limbs is found outside a women's refuge. The Serena Seddon Shelter for battered wives is located in Barrow Street, not far from Coffin's own home in St Luke's Tower. The link to Coffin, though, is more sinister than mere proximity, for the initials J.C. are written on the package, and the shelter is housed in the building where he lived on his arrival in the Second City. The discovery opens a door, through which troop a succession of horrible and violent events: lies, deception and sudden death. Thus Coffin's ghost walks...