At the little hotel in Glen Shira, in the Cuillin of Skye mountains, professional guides and dedicated climbers gather—among them Melinda Pink, J.P., an amateur detective. One of the guides, in his forties, is growing soft and careless, and moreover, he’s a womaniser. Another guide is a startlingly attractive woman, who hardly bothers to conceal her affair with her client, though his non-climbing wife is going almost insane with jealousy. The hotel owner, known derisively as ‘the Colonel’, is savagely resentful of the permissive society and the way the world is going. And the flashpoint in this situation is provided by a ravishingly pretty young girl who arrives, incongruously, in a big floppy hat, halter top, jeans and flip-flops. Miss Pink has two murders to contend with, each ingeniously camouflaged, and to reach the solution takes all of her climbing expertise and her understanding of what makes people tick.