"The inspector vacillated in his zeal. A man killing his wife was something, but for a man to kill his wife because she had betrayed him and taken a lover was barely a crime in his book. Rather, it set square with his simple notion of chivalry and manliness." Is it justifiable homicide if you kill your wife because she is having an affair with a much younger man? And how can you be convicted if there is no body and only one unreliable witness who says she saw a severed head sitting in a large pool of blood? And yet...and yet...it seems they must convict, unless...she isn't dead after all? Set in an island in the Mediterranean and on the island of Phuket in Thailand, this novel traces the arrest of a prematurely retired and successful British businessman for the grisly murder of his much younger and beautiful wife whom he discovered having an affair with a local. The man, Vince, is incarcerated in the Dickensian jail on the Mediterranean island and is about to give up all hope until his lawyer meets an ambitious beautiful and courageous British female politician destined for great things in the Government of the day.