October 1930. A young English nurse boards a ferry to France, expecting to have a fun-filled weekend there—only to disappear without a trace. For six months, there is not a single piece of news about her until, at the edge of a park forest, her body is discovered. There are almost no clues left; the police on both sides of the English Channel hit a dead end. Rumors have it that the victim may have had connections among the most influential circles of British society…
And then the investigation is taken up by the inimitable Agatha Christie and four other celebrated writers, rightly known as the Queens of Detective Fiction: Dorothy Sayers, Nairn Marsh, Margery Allingham, and Emma Orczy.
At first, the friends treat the case as a kind of “murder game”—they want to show up their male colleagues and prove that they deserve a place in the newly established London Detective Club. However, it soon becomes clear: this is not a literary puzzle. Reality is far more dangerous than fiction, and the bold, inventive sleuths—especially one of them—begin to face a very real disaster…