When one of three elderly sisters, great-granddaughters of Karl Marx, is found dead in her Jerusalem Lane house, Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla and Detective Chief Inspector Brock investigate. An atmospheric police procedural - the first in the acclaimed Brock and Kolla mysteries.
Jerusalem Lane is a little piece of Dickensian London untouched by development, its inhabitants mainly refugees from pre-war central Europe. But could elderly Meredith Winterbottom really have been killed for the politics of another age?
As Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla and Detective Chief Inspector Brock delve into the lane's eccentric melting pot, past and present interlink in unexpected ways. What connects Mrs Rosenfeldt and Adam Kowalski to a smooth property developer and an American academic? And what is Meredith's son Terry up to? Not to mention the dottily Marxist sisters . . . Is this a recipe for murder?