Crime novelist and detective Paul Temple and his glamorous wife Steve made their first appearance on BBC Radio in 1938. They inhabited a sophisticated world of chilled cocktails and fast cars, where the women were chic and the men wore cravats where Sir Graham Forbes, of Scotland Yard, usually needed Temple's help with his latest case.
The first message sent to Tom Thorne's phone was just a picture - the blurred image of a man's face, but Thorne had seen enough dead bodies to know that the man was no longer alive. But who was he? Who sent the photograph? And why? While the technical experts attempt to trace the sender, Thorne searches the bulletins for a reported death that matches the photograph. Then another picture arrives.