Peverell Press poet and partner Gabriel Dauntsey calls on his old friend Commander Adam Dalgliesh when the Press falls victim to a spate of malicious pranks. When the body of a senior editor is discovered and the Press's ruthless managing director goes missing, Dalgliesh's investigation takes on a new urgency.

There's a snake in the grass at Innocent House -- Peverell Press's elegant home on the Thames -- and it was found wound around the neck of the Press's cold-blooded managing director, Gerard Etienne Etienne's death leads Dalgliesh to question the late publisher's long list of enemies, from most of Peverell's staff to Etienne's former lover Frances Peverell to disgruntled former Peverell author, Esme Carling. Motives abound -- and a new victim surfaces.