When Mim Fitz returns to the isolated cottage on Cape Breton Island she shared with her late partner, she is uneasily alone and troubled by a nagging sense of something amiss that she can't quite pinpoint. Despite happy reunions with old friends and the prospect of houseguests arriving soon, she is troubled. There are signs that someone may have been in her cottage. Fleeting images of the shadowy person Cape Bretoners have dubbed the Black Specter ramp up her disquiet. When Mim learns that the house next door, dubbed the Murder House by local residents, has been leased, she is pleased at the notion of near neighbors. She visits them and learns the renters are wildlife filmmakers from Vancouver. They are in Cape Breton to film coyotes for their company Natureflics. She meets fashionable Astrid Dunn, her dynamic husband CEO Nick Dunn and their employees, Natureflics brash photographer Gabe Dreyfus, and buxom film editor Karen Connor.Not twenty-four hours later, after neighbors inform her of the shocking death of Astrid Dunn, Mim's apprehension surges. She pays Nick Dunn a condolence visit and finds him disconsolate. Astrid Dunn's death also brings Mim into contact with Claudine Hurley, a supremely warm and competent young constable. Cape Breton Island is newly minted RCMP Constable Claudine Hurley's first posting. After she and Sergeant Potts are called to the death of Astrid Dunn, she confides in him her sense that something is not quite right about the woman's grisly death. She finds his dismissal of her doubts to be unaccountably vehement and cannot accept his adamant conclusion that Astrid Dunn's death was accidental. Constable Hurley can't shake the sense that there is more to Astrid Dunn's death than meets the eye. She continues to investigate discretely at first, with help from a retired chief superintendent and films taken on the night of the death. Critical information she receives from Mim and her houseguests enables her ultimately to piece together the events that led to Astrid Dunn's death. Constable Hurley stubborn persistence eventually earns the respect and support of her superior officer. And Mim Fitz comes finally to understand the source of the unease that has haunted her.