It's easy to underestimate the eccentric, quietly spoken Inspector James Boswell Hodge Leonard, with his bicycle and his tweeds, and his superiors who make the mistake of doing so soon discover he's not too keen on toeing the Establishment line.

When the grisly corpse of a traveller is found outside a Roman bath, Leonard's orders are to clear up the mess with no fuss, but he begins to kick over Bath's social dustbins and out tumbles decades of secrets and suspects, not smelling too sweetly...

The rich and sadistic Montague James, controller of people's lives; Hilary, the former adult film star; Norma, the painter of controversial nudes; they all know more than they are revealing. Leonard's problem is to find the one person who knows the truth - before the rest do, and before the powers that be put the lids back on those dustbins...