Sergeant Goode is close to his retirement, a situation irritating him enough before a young pen pusher without any respect for village life had been sent to get to know the local patch. When his girlfriend falls fatally during a row, blind panic sets in and Goode makes a hasty exit, triggering a sequence of events which would see a simple accident become the centre of a major police investigation quickly spiralling out of control. Starting with a detective sergeant with a desire to prove his theory that all serious crime can be closely linked to the occult, the villagers, all hiding secrets of varying degrees set up a fake occult meeting complete with a frozen chicken as the animal sacrifice. With a discredited former tabloid journalist, hungry to find the big story that would bring him back into the Fleet Street fold, a village gossip with a murky war-time secret desperate to hide her true identity, and a group of investigators, sent to discredit the local Reverend and protect the church's reputation, all combined to escalate the situation further, this sleepy Devon village soon becomes the centre of a national media scandal. As if things couldn't get any worse, a hostage situation draws in even more police, and even a squad of soldiers led by a battle hungry sergeant with a massive chip on his shoulder, and the story takes on a final twist, before culminating in a car chase like no other and a cliff hanger end.