Drama comes to the quiet town of Newton Lauder when the canal overflows, flooding streets, houses and the surrounding countryside. The drama is intensified when there is found, in the emptied canal, a skeleton, soon identified as that of a canal employee, absent for over a year and missed, but not lamented, by his colleagues.Keith Calder - gunsmith, hunter and more-or-less reformed Casanova - is only interested in the flood as it affects the movement of the local wildfowl, until he is interviewed by the police in connection with certain anomalies in the dead man's firearms certificate. During the interview, Keith gets word that his shop is on fire; and there starts a horrific chain of events which involves him deeply and personally.As assault and attempted murder are added to homicide and arson, Keith's inbred instinct as a hunter comes to the fore and what follows is a tremendously exciting and tautly-plotted whodunnit.