When an elderly woman is stabbed to death in her own home, Detective Inspector Hillary Greene is instantly puzzled. The house doesn't appear to have been robbed and Flo Jenkins herself was well-liked by her neighbors. It was also widely known that she was very unwell and when the post mortem reveals that she was riddled with cancer and had only weeks left to live, Hillary is even more nonplussed. Why kill a dying woman? To make matters worse, her team is distracted by the upcoming marriage of their sergeant, Janine Tyler, to Superintendent Philip Mallow and her subsequent transfer out of HQ. Hillary's new DC turns out to have something of a violent temper and an uncertain past. With no forensics, no leads, and only a junkie nephew as a vague suspect, will this be Hillary Greene's first failure on a murder case?