Murray Jarvis, broke, persuades Steven Breck, a terminal cancer patient, to exchange identities with him; Breck, as Jarvis, will die, and Rachael Jarvis will inherit a considerable insurance claim. But a perfect plan becomes a deadfall; in Switzerland, Jarvis is recognized by an old girl friend; in Scotland, Breck is given the hope of an arrest (medical) by a doctor and life becomes doubly valuable when Rachael falls in love with him.... Heyes is an incisive, ironic writer and he handles this uneasy menage a trois so that the only certainty is death-but whose? and the reader will read on, ineluctably.