Fat, unlovely Roberta Teys has been found, clad in her best dress, an axe in her lap, in the old stone barn beside her father's headless corpse. Her first words are: 'I did it. And I'm not sorry' and she refuses to add to this. The parish priest insists that she is innocent, but the villagers are convinced of her guilt.
Enter Inspector Thomas Lynley, 8th Earl of Asherton who, along with Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, has been sent by Scotland Yard to solve this particularly savage murder.
And as Lynley and Havers wind their way through a dark labyrinth of secret scandals and appalling crimes, they uncover a series of shocking revelations that will shatter the facade of this peaceful Yorkshire village - and their own lives as well.
