Brigadier Patrick McIntosh is contacted about a mysterious death in the small town of Parys. The victim was found in a locked hotel room, with a bullet wound to his left temple, and the weapon held in his right hand. The mystery only deepens when McIntosh finds out the man was registered in the hotel under the pen name of a romance novelist. In real life he was a teacher. Who did the murderer want dead, the author or his alter ego, the schoolteacher? Soon, McIntosh found out that the pen name had been assumed and the identity of the schoolteacher was fake. Digging deeper, he learns that the real identity of his victim was Arthur Osborne, suspect in a series of large diamond robberies. McIntosh is left in a conundrum, no one wanted the teacher dead, and everyone needed to keep the thief alive. Fortunately, he can always count on the help of his favourite coffee shop and gallery mother-and-daughter team, Ella and Isabella Cronje.