When the notorious investigative journalist Rhoda Gradwyn checks into Mr. Chandler-Powell's private clinic in Dorset to have a disfiguring scar removed, she has every expectation of a successful operation and the start of a new life. However, she should never leave Cheverell Manor alive. Dalgliesh and his team are called in to investigate the murder, and later a second death that raises far more complicated issues than just the question of innocence or guilt.

P. D. James (1920-2014) was born in Oxford and attended the Cambridge High School for Girls. From 1949 to 1968, she worked in the National Health Service and then in the Home Office, initially in the police department and later in the criminal justice policy division. All these experiences influenced her novels. She was a member of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Arts and served as a governor of the BBC, as a member of the Arts Council where she chaired the Literary Advisory Panel, on the board of the British Council, and as a magistrate in Middlesex and London. She was an honorary bencher of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple. She received awards for crime novels in the UK, America, Italy, and Scandinavia, including the Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Award and the National Arts Club Medal of Honor for Literature. She was awarded honorary doctorates from seven British universities, was made an OBE in 1983, and was appointed a Life Peer in 1991. In 1997, she was elected president of the Society of Authors and stepped down from that position in August 2013.