For Dorothea Cassidy, Thursdays are special – a welcome respite from her duties as a vicar’s wife. Then she is strangled, and Thursdays are never the same again.

With the summer carnival underway in the small town of Otterbridge, Inspector Ramsay begins a painstaking investigation. He discovers that Dorothea had taken on a number of deserving cases, including a sick and lonely old woman, a disturbed adolescent and a compulsive gambler. Now these people are haunted, in one way or another, by Dorothea’s goodness. And even her immediate family have secrets to hide. But which of them could possibly have wanted her dead?