The Reverend Charles Howard sat in judgement on the poor, assessing their applications for the workhouse. But now he is dead, stabbed and brutally beaten in his office. Has some poor beggar he turned down taken his vengeance? Murdoch's investigation takes him into the world of the destitute who had nowhere to turn when they knocked on the Reverend Howard's door. The novels that inspired the popular TV series, now on alibi.