- Fox hunting, taxidermy and Oscar Wilde are part of the backdrop as Barnaby and Troy investigate a series of murders, beginning with that of a tramp in the woods.
- While Barnaby is away on holiday his replacement, the soon to be retired Ron Pringle, arrests Billie Gurdie for the murder of a tramp who lived in the woods near the village of Upper Marchwood. When Billie's father is also found dead in the same woods some three weeks later, an apparent suicide, Barnaby seriously questions the coincidence. When the post-mortem reveals the second death to also be murder, Barnaby is certain that both murders were committed by the same person.—garykmcd
- Barnaby, en famille, enjoys hols in France, while Causton and Upper Marchwood receive protection from Superintendent Ron Pringle, a man on the very eve of his retirement from CID. The Super is but one week shy from permanently joining the fox hunting set in that very County. Barnaby considers the Browning-quoting Super "an oaf." When Barnaby returns, he discovers in his quest to close one last case, Pringle bolluxed a murder investigation. Certainly, Pringle arrested someone who had been near the scene causing mischief; he chose a troubled boy unable to defend himself. Soon, the boy's father is found murdered in the very same woods and in a similar manner; Barnaby and Troy go to work. As ever, Barnaby is determined to uncover the truth. But here, he particularly places truth above expediency to find justice for everyone concerned... and more than a little (quiet but well deserved) satisfaction in being correct in his mental judgments.—LA-Lawyer
- Barnaby duly doubts on return from Paris vacation the arrest of young fox hunt saboteur Billy Gurdie for the fatal clobbering of an unidentified tramp who fell into a mean trap with wolf iron during another fox hunt organized by masters James Fitzroy and Marcia Tranter from the grand estate her spineless son Grahame inherited, his father being declared legally death after seven years missing, from his grandfather. The hasty arrest was the last and interim case of police superintendent Ron Pringle, a clumsy, nasty snob who retires to the same village and craves joining the hunt-obsessed society. Billy's father, hunt-employed Ben Gurdie, is found in the same wood part, dubiously supposed a suicide. Nearby lives uncooperative crone Linda Wagstaff, who lives with her memories from the theater in a former railway car. Grahame's wife Kate Tranter threatens to leave him with their baby boy. All over the forest roams and observes taxidermist Henry Carstairs, who might have inherited the estate, and lurks around it, like Billys' mate Dave Hedges, on the evening Pringle is murdered there, having slipped out for a leak. Barnaby digs for clues deep in the past, and morgues.—KGF Vissers
- When a tramp is found murdered in the woods following a hunt meet, a local poacher is arrested and jailed. However, when the suspect's father is also brutally murdered Barnaby and Troy realize that there is much more to this case than first appears.—Anonymous
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