Beautiful and mysterious student Marion Summers goes into a seizure at the Reading Room of the London Library, slips into a coma, and dies shortly thereafter. The autopsy reveals the cause as acute arsenic poisoning -- and there's no reason for Summers to have been exposed to this once-common, now-rare poison. With the help of her superior, DCI David Brock, newly promoted DI Kathy Kolla of the Serious Crime Unit of Scotland Yard investigates.

Sammy Starling was once a notable villain, but for some years he's been a semi-respectable businessman with two passions: His beautiful young wife and his stamp collection. And now, it seems, he's a victim: Someone has kidnapped Eva Starling and is sending ransom demands in envelopes with rare and extremely valuable stamps. The stamps feature the likeness of the young Queen Victoria, to whom Eva bears a startling resemblance, and they have been rendered worthless. Dead, one might say. The message is not lost on Sammy. What's not lost on Detective Chief Inspector Brock is that Sammy nearly cost Brock his job, back in the day, and took at least one good man's life.