Published in 1975
From the back cover (Orion 2003 edition):
 In a sprawling West Country port lies the insalubrious Stanley Street, a dubious cul-de-sac just off the busy main road. And when a prostitute is found naked and strangled in her bed there, Chief Superintendent Wycliffe is called in to investigate.
But things aren't quite as straightforward as they seem. The victim, Lily Painter, is the kind of girl who likes Beethoven and has plenty of qualifications to her name - not the usual sort of prostitute at all.
The more Wycliffe investigates, the more surprises he uncovers. But it takes a dangerous arson attack and a second murder before the solution to this complex and fast-moving puzzle can be found.
Home: Tamar estuary, on the Cornwall side.
"... he had bought a substantial granite-built house in hallf an acre of ground overlooking the estuary, and an endless panorama of ships steamed through the narrows at the bottom of his garden."
"As he neared home a half-moon rode high in the sky above the estuary and the Watch House stood out white in the landscape."
"Their new surroundings certainly agreed with Helen."
"Wycliffe was standing at the living-room window, looking out over the narrows. Cold and brittle sunshine but brilliant. Helen's embryo trees and shrubs looked forlorn."
Office: Plymouth.
"He had been in the city for a month. In a political deal Area Police Headquarters had been transferred there and CID had followed. He wasn't sorry, the sprawling, bustling port pleased him better than the rather inward looking cathedral city from which he had come."
Assistant: “Chief Inspector Gill was lolling in a swivel chair opposite his chief. The two men could hardly have been less alike. Wycliffe, barely regulation height, looking more like a lean and kindly monk than a policeman; Gill, six feet four in his socks, a face like a rubber mould, extrovertedd and often coarse."
Method of Working:
"Wycliffe was undergoing an experience which he had known many times before. In the course of an investigation, after a seemingly endless series of interrogations, interviews and reports, when his ideas were confused and contradictory, his mind would suddenly clear and the salient facts would stand out in sharp relief as though a lens had suddenly brought them into proper focus. At this stage he would not necessarily distinguish any pattern in the facts but he would, from then on, be able to classify and relate them so that a pattern would eventually emerge."
Pathologist: "Franks was in his office dictating notes on the case to his secretary. Franks and his secretaries were notorious - this one was blonde with shoulder length hair and the serene expression of a nun but, by all accounts, she was following the same path as her predecessors. What it was that appealed to these young women about the roly-poly docter had escaped Wycliffe's notice."
Location:
Plymouth. "Stanley Street is a cul-de-sac.....the main thoroughfare between the docks and the city centre is only a block away...."
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