The action begins with the proposition that it was Sir John Cartwright, famous author of Restoration Comedies (along with Congreve and Wycherly), who first invented the detective puzzle as we know it. One of his descendants produces the draft of Sir John's detective play. It is adpated for the modern stage by a young playwright who featured in an earlier novel by Sara Woods. The lead feminine part in the play goes to Meg Hamilton, an old friend of Jenny and Antony Maitland. Maitland is famous as a barrister / detective, and thus becomes involved in some weird events at the theatre where rehearsals are taking place. To start with these events take the form of superstitious warnings, disembodied voices, stage accidents, and suggestions of poltergeists and menace. They culminate in murder by stabbing. The puzzle to be solved by naming the murderer is vastly complex and stimulating here: main suspects are the actors in the play, known under their real names as well as those of their parts. And then there is the problem of who has alibis for each of the gruesome pranks that precede the murder... Sara Woods is a prolific and very successful inventor of whodunnit novels and of characters who are held in much affection by a great many readers. She is once again in tremendous form, setting a problem which only Maitland is likely to solve.