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.