The question that haunts Ian Alexander MacDuffy is why the playwright Campbell McCluskie was murdered at 10.30 p.m. on Wednesday 16 June 1954, for that was the very moment that Ian's mother died giving birth to him. The coincidence suggests that some universal meaning may lie behind that gratuitous and painful event. Ian tries to uncover every detail of Campbell's short but colourful life: the guilt-ridden hypocrisy of his grandfather; his father's success as a shoe manufacturer; his childhood in Clydebank; the death of his favourite aunt; his bewildering role in the D-Day landings; his post-war success as a playwright; his passionate and eventful love life; his ambiguous relations with the criminal underworld; his violent death - because as Campbell himself wrote, in his inimitable style, 'It's all down tae patterns and figures; if you can decipher them, then Auld Nickie-Ben'll dance tae your tune.'
