On a November evening, trainee doctor Sasha Johnson is stabbed in London's Russell Square. Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid calls in his detective wife, Gemma James, who has been assigned to a task force on knife crimes. Along with her partner, detective sergeant Melody Talbot, Gemma aids the investigation. As the team unravels the victim's tangled connections, another murder raises the stakes, and in this 19th case (following A Bitter Feast) they must put even friendships on the line to find the killer in the streets of Bloomsbury.