The Idyllic life in Eden, Devon County, home of Spig and Molly O'Leary, is suddenly menaced by the spectre of a long-forgotten death and the grim reality of imminent murder.

Hatred in the night... There was little love in the Winthrop clan, not in the mother who ruthlessly dominated it, nor the son who disgraced it, nor the daughter who sullied its name. Certainly it wasn't Cupid who one dark night sent an arrow rippling through a human throat... And now the Winthrops had to desperately seek the murderer in their midst, before that minister of silent death could strike again...

To millions of loyal readers, Myron Kane was a great man, a genius, a truth-teller. But to everyone who knew him personally, Myron Kane was a man with the touch of death, whose razor-edged pen could destroy a reputation, a life, a soul -- and never hesitated to do so. It was no surprise, then, that somebody decided to prove once and for all that a knife, if buried in human flesh, could be far deadlier than a pen...

Judy was very beautiful, very much in love and very much married to the wrong man. A speedy divorce seemed the only solution to everybody's problems, but little did she imagine that a flying visit to Reno would turn into a terrifying case of murder -- with the shadow of a noose dangerously close to her own lovely neck.