The blue tango

Tainted by scandal from the beginning, rumour and innuendo pursued the Curran family; Judge Curran, ambitious and driven, weighed down by gambling debt and her brother, the ascetic Desmond, lost in religious zealotry. There were supposed savage disagreements between Patricia and her mother. But most of the doubt concerned Patricia. Was she simply spirited and sexually confident, or demanding and promiscuous? In a storm of publicity, rumour and counter-rumour, Scotland Yard dispatch Chief Inspector John Capstick who uncovers a complex web of deceit. Determined to secure a conviction, Capstick's focus falls on a peripheral figure, a young army conscript, Iain Hay Gordon, who finds himself fighting for his life in the shadow of the gallows.