Who took the life of the wealthy brewer Eustace Bunnet - and in the same cruel way that his beloved dog was killed shortly before? A wife tired of his insults? The brewery workers he literally abused? The husband of one of the beauties to whom he did not give way? Or his younger brother Joe, whose life he ruined?.. The provincial police are at a loss. Nigel Strangeways agrees to help... The police suspect the famous writer Frank Kearns of the murder of aristocrat George Rattery. After all, Rattery recently knocked down Kearns’s little son to death and fled the scene of the crime... Revenge of a father distraught with grief - what is not the motive? However, Nigel Strangeways, into whose hands the suspect's diary falls, is sure that everything is not as simple as it seems...