When babies disappear from a quiet British village, Detective Inspector James Roland finds suspects everywhere, from the Carlton Fertility Clinic, to a romance novelist's cottage, to withdrawn, guilt-ridden student Stephen Langmead....
As the village of Saxton in Suffolk swelters in a heatwave, a series of macabre hoaxes are played on various inhabitants. The local press gives lurid coverage to the events, nicknaming the instigator The Joker, but then one of the victims is killed....
When lay reader Rachel Morland discovers the body of an elderly parishioner, she enlists the aid of policeman Mike Croft and his former boss, Nick Holroyd, to discover who is responsible for a rash of supposed suicides...