
After battling for justice at great personal risk in his first recorded case Sergeant Caleb Cluff made a swift return to duty in this book The story opens one wet & windy night with the discovery of a young woman's corpse lying face down on the cobblestones of a passageway in the Yorkshire town of Gunnarshaw The deceased is Jane Trundle an attractive girl who worked as an assistant in a chemist's shop She yearned for the good life & Cluff finds more money in her handbag than she would have earned in wages There are echoes of Sherlock Holmes (' You know my methods Watson') in the title & in an exchange in the first chapter between Cluff & Superintendent Patterson but Cluff is very much his own man Little that goes on in & around the mean streets of Gunnarshaw escapes him He is scornful of detectives who rely solely on supposed facts ' More than facts were in question here the intangible invisible passions of human beings' Understanding those passions leads him gradually towards the truth about Jane's murder