When a group of financial cripples, related to or connected with a wealthy, blunt and brutal old woman are involved in murder, it takes John Bent, on his fifth case, to untangle cautiously the many, terrific motives, the lack of alibis, the complicated groundwork that lead him to his closing in on the probabilities that remain. A sifting of miscalculations, and a detailed analysis of events of the past make solid D as in dead reading.