It is winter in London in the early 1950s: John Davies confesses to strangling his wife and baby daughter. It promises to be a depressingly straightforward case for DI Ted Stratton of West End Central. When Davies recants, blaming respectable neighbour Norman Backhouse for the crimes, nobody sees any reason to believe him. Davies is convicted and hanged. But after a series of gruesome discoveries, Stratton begins to suspect there has been a terrible miscarriage of justice. Meanwhile, with her marriage in tatters, ex-MI5 agent Diana Calthrop is determined to start a new life. Despite a promising beginning she soon finds herself in trouble. And with a seemingly unstoppable killer of women on the loose, she is very vulnerable indeed…