When an adolescent boy's mutilated body is found, it doesn't take long for the police to realize that this is the work of a serial killer.
When an adolescent boy is found murdered under bizarre circumstances, New Scotland Yard acting superintendent Thomas Lynley and his colleagues tie the crime to a series of killings but find the case complicated by racial issues.
In London, a woman parliamentarian's daughter is kidnaped and a newspaper editor with whom the parliamentarian had an affair receives a call, threatening the girl's life unless he admits paternity. Inspector Lynley suspects the girl is behind it.
Scotland Yard Inspector Thomas Lynley has arrived in Keldale to investigate the case of fat, unlovely Roberta Teys who was found in her best dress, an axe in her lap, seated in the old stone barn beside her father's headless corpse.
"Deborah and Simon take a country holiday to visit a favorite vicar only to discover that the vicar has died. The coroner's inquest has returned a verdict of "death by misadventure."