The "Isles on the Edge of the Sea," so named by the Norse, form an Atlantic barrier along the western shore of Scotland. These remote islands of the Hebrides are a continuation of the mountains of the Western Highlands reaching far out to sea. For the most part they are barren projections, covered with machair, peat, rock and the vestiges of thousands of years of habitation. One of these projections, Beinn Dornie, a sister mountain of Beinn Dhubh, Black Mountain, on Harris, forms the island of Dorney about two miles west of the larger Isle of Harris. It is late winter, a miserably wet, cold, and windy time when even the warm peat fires fail to take the damp out of the stone dwellings. The only savior is the Dorney single malt made at the island's ancient distillery. Marjorie Collins joins forces with childhood heartthrob, Patrick Hayes, now an Anglican priest, in a bizarre struggle with smugglers, pirates, ghosts and surreptitiously with Lucifer himself. Lucifer appears to have emerged from a grotesque painting by a demented artist, and both of Marjorie's parents are murdered while chasing Lucifer to the island of Dorney. What would attract the devil to this howling, storm-swept speck in the North Atlantic? Patrick and Marjorie find themselves in a race to uncover the evil of the Devil's Lair in time to save the islanders from death and destruction.