Corinna Chapman wakes at four every morning to make bread. She's happy with her life. The residents of her little Melbourne community finally caught the rotten man sending those "scarlet woman" letters. The former addict she rescued from her alleyway, Jason, is shaping into a good apprentice. And her beautiful Israeli lover, Daniel, who has been away for the last couple of weeks, is as enchanting as ever.

Corinna has no intention of doing any more investigative work...until she bites into what should have been a lovely violet cream gourmet chocolate and instead chomps a chili-filled catastrophe.

Could someone want Heavenly Pleasures, her friends' chocolate shop, to fail? Is this tasteless tampering part of an elaborate and horrible joke? Or is it a warning that worse is to come?

Then Daniel returns bruised and battered from a run-in with a so-called messiah. Could the assailant be involved in the chocolate crime as well? And who is the mysterious man who has moved into the upper apartment?