On 10 November 1984 Laurie Tanner comes home to his farmhouse in country Victoria and finds Jenny, his wife, dead, her hand wrapped around the barrel of a bolt-action rifle. Her death was viewed as suicide.

Deeply puzzled by the mass of anomalies in the case, Robin Bowles, a Melbourne company director, goes looking for answers. How, for instance, could Jenny have shot herself twice in the brain - after shooting both her hands first?

What unfolds is a true-life detective story, a bizarre tangle of police bungles, cover-ups and family intrigue.