Daisy Dalrymple visits relatives with fiancé DCI Alec Fletcher, and covers the 1923 Henley Royal Regatta for an American magazine. But tensions escalate between the Ambrose team coxswain Horace Bott -- shopkeeper's son and scholarship student at Oxford -- and rower Basil DeLancey -- the son of an Earl and all-round bounder -- who keels over and dies mid-race.