On Friday next, pub owner Jack Steadman would hang for the murder of Alfie Goode, drunkard and ne'er-do-well. The case was open-and-shut to everyone but Miss Harriet Unwin, who had less than a week to prove that Jack, a Crimean war hero, was innocent. Her snooping soon took her to the ballroom of a retired general's stately manor. But there, between the quadrilles and waltzes, Miss Unwin had to step most carefully, for a killer could make her next partner... death!

Bright as a new penny, and incredibly clever, Harriet Unwin has a knack for criminal investigation. The most engaging young sleuth ever to snoop upstairs and downstairs, Miss Unwin is also one of the most charming creations of Britain's popular and prolific mystery writer, H.R.F. Keating...

Evelyn Hervey was the pseudonym of H. R. F. Keating used to publish three novels with Weidenfeld in the mid-eighties.

Keating was born at St Leonards-on-Sea, Sussex, in 1926. He went to Merchant Taylors, leaving early to work in the engineering department of the BBC. After a period of service in the army, which he describes as 'totally undistinguished', he went to Trinity College, Dublin, where he became a scholar in modern languages. He was also the crime books reviewer for The Times for fifteen years. His first novel about Inspector Ghote, The Perfect Murder, won the Gold Dagger of the Crime Writers Association and an Edgar Allen Poe Special Award.