"Whoever had broken into the shop might just have gone upstairs afterwards, might just be there still...My first reaction was anger: I wanted to roar up the stairs, only I could hear Barnabas saying, the way he used to when I was little: "Temper, Dido! Count to twenty-nine..."

Selling rare books has its moments, but few are anything close to thrilling--except when Dido Hoare's scoundrel of an ex-husband suddenly reappears and puts a pulse of excitement in the air.But events go from interesting to intense when someone ends up murdered and the culprit seems to think Dido has something worth killing for, too.

With the help of her father, Barnabas, a retired academic with a penchant for mysteries, Dido may be able to divert the killer long enough to figure out who wants her dead and why. Recovering from a heart attack, the irrepressible Barnabas is taking chances that are likely to give Dido a coronary of her own, and give the police a bad case of indigestion. But as Dido and Barnabas are about to learn, every crime has its victims and its payoffs--it's just a matter of being on the right side of the bookshelf before everything comes tumbling down.

Though Ashe's life seemed quiet enough, his death has Scotland Yard's Special Branches sniffing around Dido and her shop. Her sometime flame, Inspector Grant, has been instructed not to talk to her about the case, and Dido has had some bruising run-ins with a mystery man. It's a dangerous guessing game that takes her from abandoned buildings to the Egyptian cultural attache limo, a puzzle that brings Dido ever closer to other people's greedy ghosts--and to a past full of deceit and treachery that could spell fatal trouble for her and her father.