P．D．詹姆斯是英国当代最著名的推理小说女作家，被尊称为“推理小说第一夫人”。出生于1920年的P．D．詹姆斯自1950年开始写作，至今笔耕不辍。她已出版近20部作品，她的大部分作品均被拍成电视剧或电影。 P．D.詹姆斯的作品曾经多次获得英美推理小说奖。1987年荣获有“诺贝尔推理文学奖”之称的英国推理小说家协会“钻石匕首奖”终身成就奖，并受英国皇室勋封为女伯爵，1999年荣获美国推理小说家协会大师奖，也曾获爱伦坡奖。P.D.詹姆斯现任英国作家协会主席。

Adam Dalgliesh takes on a baffling murder in the rarefied world of London book publishing in this masterful mystery from one of our finest novelists. Commander Adam Dalgliesh and his team are confronted with a puzzle of impenetrable complexity. A murder has taken place in the offices of the Peverell Press, a venerable London publishing house located in a dramatic mock-Venetian palace on the Thames. The victim is Gerard Etienne, the brilliant but ruthless new managing director, who had vowed to restore the firm's fortunes. Etienne was clearly a man with enemies—a discarded mistress, a rejected and humiliated author, and rebellious colleagues, one of who apparently killed herself a short time earlier. Yet Etienne's death, which occurred under bizarre circumstances, is for Dalgliesh only the beginning of the mystery, as he desperately pursues the search for a killer prepared to strike and strike again.