North Devon is enjoying a rare hot summer with tourists flocking to its coast line.
Detective Matthew Venn is called out to a rural crime scene at the home of a group of artists. What he finds is an elaborately staged murder - Dr Nigel Yeo has been fatally stabbed. His daughter, Eve, is a glass blower, and the murder weapon is a shard of one of her broken vases.
Dr Yeo seems an unlikely murder victim. He’s a good man, a public servant, beloved by his daughter. Matthew is unnerved though, to find that Eve is a close friend of Jonathan, his husband.
Then another body is found - killed in a similar way - and Matthew finds himself treading carefully through the lies that fester at the heart of his community in a case that is dangerously close to home………
