As florist Pauline Conlin opens her premises in Newcastle's famous Grainger Market one morning in 1934 she is horrified to discover the body of her young assistant, Mary Bartlett, who had been left behind the previous evening to complete an important order, stabbed to death. Who could possibly want to harm this popular innocent young woman? Young friends and colleagues, Detective Sergeant Harry Maguire and Detective Constable Bob Frame are assigned to their first murder investigation and as they struggle to find a motive they came face to face with treachery, intrigue, greed and betrayal. Struggling to make sense of an apparently senseless crime , Maguire and Frame gradually work there way through a complex web involving masterful jewellery fraud involving two more inncent young people, two suspects with a link to the Freemasons, another who is married to the shop proprietor and is a well known and lascivious bookmaker in the city centre. A complicated web of deception seems insoluble until the two young detectives come across a potentially vital clue which leads to a brutal climax, and a second murder. Will they identify the killer in time to prevent a second brutal murder?