Jack Ramsden, Cabinetmaker for Stage Magicians, died whilst preparing his annual presentation for his wife's birthday. It was meant to be an ingenious demonstration of Magic and Illusion until it all went wrong. Jack was killed by a shot from a rifle on a stand. The puzzle was - he was alone in a locked room. Accident or suicide? Fourteen years later a cryptic letter from Laura, the daughter of the dead man, urges Giles Dawson, a historian of Magic and the Great Illusionists, to return to the family home in Scotland where he'd spent much of his boyhood, to help prove her father's death was Murder. The attempt to solve the Locked Room Mystery puts Giles in Danger with Fear and Dread constant companions. Will a death-defying Houdini-type illusion in the United States, just months before Jack's death, explain "how a bottle-opener can open more than bottles"? Can an introduction to a bronze statue open his mind on the truth before death has again taken a cold hand in the proceedings?