Upon her return to her adopted home, Bermuda, from France, where she helped solve the mystery surrounding The Tragic End of Diane de Briare, Margaret Blackburn, the brilliant and attractive amateur sleuth, discovers an ominous message left on her answering machine. Someone had dialed the wrong number, and it was clear that the message was not intended to reach her. However, what the message contained sounded too serious to be ignored. Margaret decides to look into it, and this takes her on a vertiginous, investigative merry-go-round through Montreal, Virginia, London, and Paris.