Bored with her job, bored with being perpetually skint, Bernice Summerfield leaps at the chance of a free holiday arranged by her new friend Maeve Ruthven, St Oscar's Professor of Comparative Religion. But all is not what it seems. Benny's holiday rapidly goes from bad to worse to downright dangerous. For a start, the "luxury cruise" is a religious pilgrimage, and alcohol is forbidden to those on board. Then she is attacked, badly injured and confined to a wheelchair. And that's before the murder.