Bryce Darcy, partner is a highly successful family business, has been brutally murdered. Charlotte Darcy, sister to the victim, has confessed. Open and shut case, Detective Inspector Carol Ashton is informed. Not so, argues Carol's aunt, friend to the Darcy family. She contends that Charlotte is mentally incompetent.

Carol reopens the investigation. Bus she is in personal crisis, close to burnout. Sick of the patriarchal framework of police work, sick of hiding her real lesbian self for the sake of her career.

Carol's lover is not much help--Sybil has found her own direction in a dynamic women's group. And the loyal Detective Sergeant Mark Bourke is distracted by his interest in the career of a promising female constable new to homicide.

Amid her own predicament, Carol finds herself embroiled in a family at war. She discovers that the dead man was a member of a support group for married gay men. And that the Darcy family, blessed with fame and fortune, seethes with secrets: ambiguous parentage, a disgraceful family swindle, fraud, infidelity, attempted drug poisoning. And among the warring Darcys is a pitiless murderer.