Charles Hilary is in love with Kathy Forrester, a beautiful television personality, but is married to Louise, an alcoholic with as many lovers as whisky bottles. His pleas for a divorce are met with threats and abuse. "You'll have to murder me first", Louise tells him and three hours later she is found dead, shot with her husband's pistol. When Charles is arrested, Kathy desperately sets to work to prove his innocence.

Life is strange and worrying for a cadet who arrives in the Pacific in the colonial service. And the testy resident commissioner, who had been expecting an experienced man, soon shows his disapproval.

A yacht in the English Channel is helped to port - when the police arrive there are no crew, no papers and no clues. What is the mystery of the ghost ship?