When a practical joke played on Gerry Wade involving alarm clocks turns out to be murder the case is taken up by Lady 'Bundle' Brent and Jimmy Thesiger. Trying to work out the significance of the seven clocks found at the murder scene, they come across the Seven Dials Club.
Jonathan Hughes, an anthropologist specialising in social stereotyping, is determined to re-examine this case. There were alarming disparities in the evidence and Hughes has little doubt that there has been a terrible miscarriage of justice. But there is also something else pushing this half-Iranian, half-Libyan outsider to reach for the truth . . . This is more than a mere expose of corruption, it is a dark tale of solitude...