Dido Hoare, dealer in rare books, single mother, and daughter who alternately shelters her father, Barnabas, from unsettling events and leans on his sage and scholarly advice, has unexpectedly been named executor of the will of one of her bookstore's more irregular customers. Before he died, Tom Ashe gave Dido an exotic necklace along with cryptic clues and dire warnings, which she took to be the ravings of a street person. Then his death turns out to be a murder, and the ever-curious Dido has to find out why.Though Ashe's life seemed quiet enough, his death has Scotland Yard's Special Branches sniffing around Dido and her shop. Her sometime flame, Inspector Grant, has been instructed not to talk to her about the case, and Dido has had some bruising run-ins with a mystery man. It's a dangerous guessing game that takes her from abandoned buildings to the Egyptian cultural attache limo, a puzzle that brings Dido ever closer to other people's greedy ghosts--and to a past full of deceit and treachery that could spell fatal trouble for her and her father.