A woman-sits in a wheelchair perched on a cliff high above the sea, her throat slit from ear to ear...

In a maze of narrow alleys behind a market square,a teenaged girl has been murdered after a night of drunken revelries with her friends.

A pair of horrific crimes, the first--a seemingly senseless murder of a helpless paraplegic--falls to Inspector Annie Cabbot, on loan to a local police department. The terrible death of young Hayley Daniels becomes Chief Inspector Alan Banks's investigation.

But shattering revelations threaten to awaken the slumbering demons of earlier, darker times, and more blood is in the offing when the two cases brutally and unexpectedly collide.