It began when a sudden summer flood swept down on Brensford and marooned visitors and inhabitants alike in the attics and top floors of their houses. Before the waters had gone down a killer had struck. It was the odd behavior of many of the suspects which first began to puzzle the man from the Yard, Inspector Arnold, and his friend Desmond Merrion. Each theory they tested seemed to point to a criminal activity - but none of them seemed to point to a murderer. Arnold's steady determination and Merrion's fertile imagination make the two a formidable team. But in Death Takes a Detour they need to use all their ingenuity and resources to untangle an absorbing and complex case of the sort for which Cecil Street, under his pen-name Miles Burton, is famous.