Gossip columnist Ethel Lambston knew everything about everybody who was somebody, and her forthcoming book is about to expose the leading figures in the fashion world. So there are more than enough suspects when she is found murdered, her throat slashed.

For Neeve Kearny, the owner of an exclusive New York boutique, the killing of one of her best customers has eerie echos of another death that occurred many years earlier- the murder of her own mother. Are the two deaths linked? Suddenly Neeve is plunged into the mystery of Ethel's murder, following a trail that leads from the glittering pleasure palaces of New York's rich and beautiful to the Mafia underworld. And who is the killer who reckons that anyone as inquisitive as Neeve deserves to die?