"One calm night in Twickenham, a businessman named Tom Treadnor is shot off his barstool at The Queen pub. Superintendent Richard Jury is called in to investigate. To complicate things further, Jury has just happened upon a photo in a newspaper of a man in the United States, who is a dead ringer for Treadnor. Meanwhile, Wiggins, Jury's partner at New Scotland Yard, becomes sidetracked by an investigation of his own: His sister, missing for years and presumed dead, has just sent a postcard to their mother. When Wiggins takes off in search of his sister, the two investigations begin to converge"--