'When the body of Horace Radcliffe, headmaster of Eldersley College, is discovered on the morning of 23rd May, 1975, police are puzzled by the corpse's appearance. Clearly the headmaster has been murdered, but why did the murder put a flower behind his ear and decorate his face with lipstick? Eldersley College is an exclusive girls' school on the outskirts of the Southern Highlands town of Bowral, so investigating the murder (and two murders that follow) falls to the lot of that town's world-weary Detective Sergeant Haines, a self-confessed country plod. Haines is assisted by his younger, promising sidekick, Constable Fraser.'(Publication summary)
