One morning, Baker Somerset arrives at her Ottawa office to find a swarm of police standing over a body sprawled across the threshold. The body carries no identification, but does have a wad of cash, a lock-pick set and a business card from Case Closed Investigations, Somerset’s private detective agency. Determination to find the man’s killer sets Somerset on a course that will cause her to relive one of the worst moments of her life. It will also offer her the chance to finally close the case that forced her to leave police work after being shot.
Her investigation finds that the dead man, had a British diplomatic passport, a courier bag full of money, files, a day-book, and a stack of newspaper and magazine articles. Her world gets turned upside down when the files reveal the man was investigating the six year old kidnapping of the wife of the British Trade Commissioner in Paris; the case Somerset was working on when she was shot, and which remains unsolved. Her fears are increased, and her commitment to the case is tested when she learns that both she and the dead man were shot with the same gun.
While her former partner at Scotland Yard, Charles Stroud, searches for clues in London, she is aided in Ottawa by Jamaican friend and computer expert, Duchess “Keys” Brown and martial arts expert Joe Manning. A breakthrough occurs when Mr. Rashid helps her discover the news clippings and magazines all concern shady and illegal activity in the arms industry.
Somerset is faced with finding the resolution to three seemingly independent crimes that are intricately twisted together—the earlier kidnapping, the current murder , and the illegal arms industry activity. She faces three determined criminals, one of whom is a wanted international assassin. Three more people are killed and Somerset is injured. To bring the cases to a conclusion she must protect the whistleblower in the arms case and risk the possible loss of her private investigator’s license, her safety and the safety of her friends.
The last twenty hours sees final face-offs, one of them deadly, with each of the culprits, and a solution that she never imagined.