Three old men die on a stormy November one by deliberate violence, one in a road accident and one by an unknown cause, Inspector Pascoe is called in to investigate the first death, but when the dying words of the acident victum suggest that a drunken Superintendent Dalziel had been behind the wheel, the integrity of the entire Mid-Yorkshire CID is called into question. Helped by the bright but wayward Detective-Constable Seymour, hindered by 'Maggie's Moron', the half-witted Constable Hector, Peter Pascoe enters the twilight and vulnerable world of the senior citizen - to discover that the beckoning darkness at the end of the tunnel holds few comforts.