When Francis Richmond, aesthete and society snob, died, he believed that no one would ever remember him. But he left behind him a diary and when his heir, Job Streatly, a young out of work actor, comes across it he takes it to the newspapers.

He wants money. Digby Price, owner of News Universal, wants revenge. He wants to destroy the Minister for Defence Procurement, Richard Tancred - and Richmond's diary tells of Tancred's involvement with a millionaire industrialist.

Price publishes. Tancred sues. As Price's counsel, Mordecai Ledbury QC, prepares to meet his thrusting young opponent Patrick Foxley in the libel court, the industrialist commits suicide. Tancred's fate seems sealed.

But Tancred is planning his own courtroom exposure. What he has to reveal is more tragic than the political shame Richmond thought he had stumbled across.

Genre: Mystery