John Rutherford, bookseller and fiction writer, discovers the bludgeoned corpse of a policeman. He takes the policeman's overturned bike to rural Paulsfield police station, two miles away, to report the crime. There he finds Sgt. Martin who initiates calls to a doctor, a photographer and Inspector Charlton. But it is not these two lead detectives who are the most interesting characters of the book. That honour goes to 19-year-old bookshop assistant George; a detective story addict and keen on solving the various mysteries surrounding Johnson's violent death.