After gaining fanfare for cracking the sensational Madison Murder case, Harry Bittercress, a former army MP, sees his private eye career take off. "Good cases are finally comin' my way!" he enthuses to Cardamine, his wife of nearly seven years. She's an American-born, Oxford-educated woman of British and Jamaican parentage - atypical for Virginia of the 1950s. But it doesn't end there. When housework is done, she doesn't pick up the Ladies Home Journal; she pores over literature, philosophy, mathematics, and social and physical science journals. Oh, and did I mention she makes a living as a psychic reader and advisor? Like I said: atypical. Cardamine counterbalances Harry's street smarts and roughhewn gumshoe work with her keen intellect and encyclopedialike knowledge. He's going to need her help when an oddball case comes in over the transom: solving a murder that hasn't happened yet! His client calmly states, "Someone's going to kill me. Afterwards, I want you to catch him."