Detective Chief Superintendent St John (pronounced Sinjun) Harcourt has been seconded from New Scotland Yard to the police force in St Albans, an old market town 20 miles north of London, to investigate the murder of a nursing assistant who has been caring for a young, autistic boy in the local hospital. With his team of Detective Sergeant Siobhan Burrows, also from New Scotland Yard, and Detective Constable Amy Rhodes, an up and coming young officer from St Albans, St John makes frustratingly little progress in his enquiries, except to discover that the murdered woman was pregnant. Then, several other murders occur, all of them pregnant women, but none of them leaving any evidence as to the killer. St John sudden, and unexpected, romantic and passionate involvement with Dr. Eve McAllister, a child psychiatrist at the hospital becomes his only solace in an investigation bereft of clues and motivation and therefore suspects. In a tale of twists and turns, interlaced with passionate interludes, St John and his two female officers pursue every slowly emerging lead until the identity of the murderer and his deranged reasoning, is finally revealed.