Retired police detective inspector Thomas Maitland has rented a house in Cornwall; he's going to paint his way to recovery from the experiences of the spring. A local woman with an intriguingly expensive collection of modern art wants to put on a show of his work.
But Maitland's next door neighbour, also his landlord, is unsettling, and when he finds his benefactor dead at the bottom of her garden, Thomas Maitland feels death casting its net over him again.

Under the names Elizabeth McGregor and Elizabeth Cooke, EM Scott has been writing for thirty years and has some 15 novels and one non-fiction work to her name, as well as over a hundred published short stories. Although she has worked in various genres, crime is her first love. She lives in Dorset.