The papers call it suicide. The deceased's father doesn't. And when Superintendent Lestrade investigates the death by duelling pistol of Anstruther Fitzgibbon, his suspicions are immediately aroused. One of Britain's leading athletes, Fitzgibbon is the first victim in a series of murders which threatens to extinguish the torch of the Olympic Games in London, in that glorious summer of 1908. When a hurdler of the ladies' team falls victim to her own bust improver, fingers are pointed in all directions, and not the least of Lestrade's worries is that he is dogged by an investigative journalist, whose husband is a jealous American detective with a short temper.