Norway in cherry blossom time seemed exactly the right place to hold a conference of the World Association of Romantic Novelists (WARN for short).  Superintendent Perry Trethowan wondered at times how he had allowed his sister to con him into accompanying her to the conference but he finally decided that his role was to be one of amused detachment and observation, most especially of the two Queens of the Conference – frothy, gushy, lethal Amanda Fairchild, the British challenger, and the vast, malevolent Lorelei Zukerman from America.

What Perry had not been prepared for was a body – one clothed in billowing pink, with a bough of cerry blossom carefully placed on the corpse.  It was a most unusual murder, in a most unusual place.