In the foothills of the Rockies, Miss Pink is visiting her friend Sophie Hamilton. But despite the summer sunshine, there is a shadow over the gathering. Rich, autocratic, Charlie Gunn delights in playing cruel jokes on his guests - and watching the victims, which include his sister-in-law Sophie, squirm. When Charlie Gunn disappears from his remote hunting cabin, Miss Pink is drawn into a volatile situation. Charlie's end was a violent one. And the police, their suspicions aroused by by his multi-million dollar will, are not satisfied that his death was the result of a fall from a horse. The family is tight-lipped, guarding its scandals. Until a blackmailer starts to make demands and suspicions grow that Charlie's death could have been murder. With a wife who was martyr to his excesses and with a mystery surrounding his granddaughter’s disappearance ten years earlier, the family are all under suspicion. As a prime suspect is taken out of the river, Miss Pink braves rattlesnakes and subsidence to follow the blood trail to an abandoned copper mine. At the site of Charlie's hunting cabin, his last and very private joke backfires in a delayed and terrible climax…