When the West End Gallery in London’s fashionable Coal Drops Yard is set alight, the fire service must use the list of paintings lodged with it, a grab list, to snatch the key pieces of art from the flames. But something has been altered. It’s the wrong list. Then the ashes reveal another tragedy: an unidentified dead body. Someone who shouldn’t have been in the gallery. Crusading journalist Famie Madden wants to know who it is and why they were there. Soon it becomes apparent that the ashes are hiding much more than they should be and that this is much more than a casual act of arson.