'Why is it,' Barclay Curle grumbles to his agent Jonah, 'that all the regional Edinburgh detectives have monosyllabic first names like Jack and Bob?'

Then Curle publishes his newest book - about an Edinburgh detective called Doug - and incites a letter from anonymous admirer accusing him of stealing the murders she has committed. Fiction and fact get even harder to tell apart when a woman found dead in a Newtown flat is found to have been killed by the method favoured by the serial killer in Curle's novel. For Detective Inspector Meldrum - first name Jim - Curle seems the obvious suspect.

To add to his difficulties, his wife is about to discover he has had a mistress for the last eight years. And the bully who made his life a misery as a boy reappears, apparently determined for some mysterious reason to take off where he set off.

Faced with a second murder and a darkening cloud of suspicion, Curle decides the time has come to take action. After all, he asks himself, who has more experience of solving murder mysteries than a crime novelist?