Former book editor Susan Ryeland is in Crete, running a struggling hotel with her partner Andreas when a couple arrive and ask Susan for help finding their missing daughter. They believe her disappearance is connected to a murder which happened at their own hotel in England as well as the Alan Conway novel that was inspired by the case. In the Conway novel "Atticus Pünd Takes The Case", we meet the characters surrounding Melissa James, an ex-actress, many of whom she has altercations with before she is found strangled in her bedroom.

Susan decides to go to London to investigate what Alan Conway knew about the Frank Parris murder. DS Locke catches up with Susan and warns her to stay away from the case. In ‘Atticus Pünd Takes The Case', spying, a Ponzi scheme and an affair all exposed as possible motives in the murder of Melissa James.