Sam Crawford, a recently retired maths lecturer, is on his way with his sister Helen to Granada. He has been booked to give a talk to students at the university on "Pattern Recognition as an Aid to Code Breaking."


It had been three years since Sam's wife Carol's mysterious disappearance while they were on holiday in Florence. Sam needed to relax but he had not anticipated being drawn in to help in a murder investigation involving the shady character, Hernandez.


Nor had he appreciated the part that the innocent Spanish statuette he had bought his wife would play in the events that were to unfold.