The third in the Hella Mauzer mystery series. Set in Finland, early summer 1953. Hella Mauzer the first-ever woman Inspector in the Helsinki Homicide Unit has been fired and is now a reluctant private investigator.

Hella has been asked by the police to do a background check on Johannes Heikkinen, a senior member of the Finnish secret services. Heikkinen has a complicated past: a child dead just weeks after birth and a wife who died in the fire that destroyed their house a few years later. Background checks are not exactly the type of job Hella was hoping for, but she accepts it on the condition that she is given access to the files concerning the roadside death of her father in 1942. Colonel Mauzer, his wife and other family members were killed by a truck in a hit and run incident. An accident, file closed, they say. But not for Hella, whose unwelcome investigation leads to some who would prefer to see her stopped dead in her tracks.