A spate of robberies targetting elderly women is disturbing enough, but especially so in a town as peaceful and sedate as Leek. Then one attack turns to murder, and Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy is called to the eerily named Spite Hall.

For the body on Nan Lawrance has been found bludgeoned to death, lying over the tapestry she was in the process of embroidering. But what could have made the robbers move from simple theft to murder?

When Joanna calls on Nan's neighbours she is surprised to find that they are none other than the old lady's estranged brother and his teenage grandson, neither of whom seems particularly willing to co-operate with her enquiries.

But slowly, aided by her colleague Mike Korpanski, Joanna unravels a mystery - the tangles threads of which are rooted years in the past ...