Metropolitan Police Officer Rebecca Meredith hopes to resurrect her reputation as a former rowing champion and Olympic hopeful by qualifying for the upcoming games in London. Training on the Thames near her Henly cottage has become a daily routine as Meredith works to regain her old form. Then disaster strikes when the rower’s body is found in the river.

It’s a perplexing situation given how good a swimmer Meredith was. What initially is considered a tragic accident soon yields a murder investigation.

Asked to conduct the inquiry into the former Met officer’s death, Scotland Yard Superintendent Duncan Kincaid finds the dead woman had managed to get on the wrong side of quite a few people. The suspects range from an Olympic rowing coach and a coworker to her ex-husband and a mysterious character seen on the bank of the river the night Meredith drowned.

As in the past, the chief inspector’s wife, Detective Inspector Gemma James, will have a hand in solving this baffling case. Finding the killer is going to tax the abilities of both detectives since this quickly turns into a very high-stakes investigation.