1929. A girl is strangled in a London alley, the corpse of a peeping Tom is found in a railway tunnel; and the gory details are updated hourly in the evening papers. Into this insalubrious world steps Dora Strang, a doctor's daughter with an unmaidenly passion for anatomy. Denied her own medical career, she begins life as filing clerk to the country's pre-eminent pathologist- and uncovers things she never could have imagined...