When the jolly Earl of Laningham drops dead in the middle of a Handel concert, the authorities insist he died of natural causes. But blind magistrate Sir John Fielding has a sixth sense for foul play, and instinct tells him that the Earl's sudden death was most decidedly unnatural. And when a severed head washes ashore on the banks of the Thames, Fielding and his assistant, fifteen-yearold Jeremy Proctor, have yet another baffling crime to solve. Their investigation of the two deaths will take them from the streets of London's seediest neighborhoods to the living rooms of its stateliest mansions - for murderers come from all walks of life...