A young man with everything to live for tragically drowns in an indoor swimming pool just as the celebrating guests are about to sit down to dinner at his own engagement party. A day for rejoicing becomes a day for dying... When Inspector Luke Thanet arrives at the home of wealthy businessman Ralph Sylvester to investigate the death, he soon realizes that not all the family and friends regard Max Jeopard's strangely timed demise as a tragedy. Max was handsome and charismatic and a brilliant writer, but his charm failed to work on many of those who knew him best. Certainly he was the last man on earth the Sylvesters would have wanted their beloved daughter Tess to marry. Even members of Max's family had cause to wish him dead. What appears at first to be a terrible accident begins to look like calculated murder. As Thanet and his partner, Sergeant Mike Lineham, probe the victim's past, they discover that the picture-perfect lifestyle portrayed by Max and his close-knit circle masks a web of tangled, often tortured, relationships. Long-buried secrets have the power to harm the innocent as well as the guilty. And one of those secrets may hold the key to Max's death.