A body has been discovered at the Shropshire Geoscience Trust, spread-eagled beneath a twelve-foot mammoth skeleton, drained of blood, and stabbed with Bronze Age artefacts in what looks disturbingly like a ritual sacrifice. DI Georgie Fraser has a venue full of suspects—the bitter ex-fiancée, a professional rival, a man nursing a grudge that stretches back to schooldays, and a trail of women who’d suffered at the victim’s hands—but the elaborate staging tells its own story. Someone wanted this man humiliated, and the killer may not be the person who landed the fatal blow.

As Georgie unpicks layers of academic fraud, old abuse, and fierce maternal love, her partner Marianne finds herself uncomfortably close to the investigation. In the tight-knit villages of the Shropshire hills, where ancient landscapes hold long memories and everyone knows everyone’s business, the truth is rarely straightforward—and protecting someone you love can make you capable of terrible things.

The second investigation for DI Georgie Fraser. Can be read as a standalone.