It's 1927 and New Orleans-born novelist Jeff Caldwell is called back to that most colourful of American cities by a frantic letter from Dave Hobart, a boyhood friend.

Dave owns a fabulous and foreboding 16th-century English manor house moved from England to New Orleans at the whim of his eccentric grandfather. But Delys Hall has been nicknamed Deadly Hall. Some terrible things have happened there - including murder - and there are rumours of hidden treasure and a ghost.

'The plot's the thing ... it is a sort of gleeful game' New York Times Book Review