Pierre Audemars has written another novel featuring M. Pinaud of the Surete, of whom it has been said "a perfectly credible sympathetic and even impressive comic detective". The story opens with Pinaud finding the first headless corpse purely by chance. This bizarre discovery leads him to the strange family at the Chateau Capt and to the remote town of Chassagne where he is met by more violent deaths. His investigations and his eventual solution to a diabolical mystery make an arresting story rich in originality and excitement.