A short fat man is found dead in the bottom of a grave freshly dug for somebody else. Nobody knows who he is, or why he is there; but Detective Superintendent 'Foxy' Reynard and his team of detectives, working through the evidence they collect in their slightly outdated way, finally bring his killer to justice. It's a British police detective story, the fifth in the series and it's told in the style of many British classic detective novels where even the criminals seem half decent.