The apprentice had told Porthos little of his background. His leather wallet contains only scribbled notes on Porthos's lineage and calls into question his family's noble status. The notes smack of blackmail, and some might see the notes as a sufficient motive for Porthos to kill the boy, which Porthos vehemently denies. The musketeers must discover the boy's identity and then determine who gains by his death.

D'Almeida uses the four men from Alexander Dumas's The Three Musketeers, Athos, Aramis, Porthos, and D'Artagnan, to unravel the mystery of the boy's death. At first, they suspect some scheme of Cardinal Richelieu, their wily enemy, especially when his guards repeatedly attack them. However, the musketeers have no idea of who commands a second group of attackers.

Their investigations take them to Porthos's home and a confrontation with his father and the parents of his former love. The boy claimed to be Porthos's son and visited both only to dredge up old scandals and hurts.

On the quartet's return journey to Paris, two groups of men, one of the Cardinal's guards and another unknown group, attack and chase them. D'Artagnan suffers a concussion, but his friends save him from worse.

Overall, D'Almeida delivers a nice cozy with enough suspects and motives to satisfy the dedicated mystery fan. Each of the Musketeer Mysteries focuses on a victim close to one of the quartet and makes that musketeer the likely murderer unless the quartet can uncover the killer.

Occasionally D'Almeida slips into anachronisms in both attitude and language. Historical novels present many challenges, and she has tackled an even more difficult one since Dumas wrote of his imagined 17th century in the 19th century.

D'Almeida has written each novel in her Musketeer Mysteries as a stand-alone work and repeats the same information on the musketeers and their histories from book to book. This may annoy some readers of the series, but makes it easy for new readers to quickly understand the musketeers. Another habit some may like, but others will not, is her use of footnotes to refer to earlier adventures and to occasionally point out Dumas's inconsistencies. The next novel in the series, The Musketeer's Inheritance, centers on D'Artagnan and the death of his father.