A woman has gone missing in Aberdeenshire without a trace until her clothes and purse are found three days later inside a stone circle. With a bad influenza epidemic hitting Police Scotland, Chief Constable David Hamilton calls on the help of two of his former employees, now private detectives, to lend a hand. Mick Malone and Jock McDuff are called in only to find that the case seems to have ties to a murder that happened two years earlier. The problem with the connection is that that the convicted murderer is in prison serving out a life sentence. As Mick and Jock dig deeper, they find that both cases seem to revolve around the mysterious magic of an ancient order of the occult. This, the fifth Mick Malone Mystery, takes Mick and Jock on an adventure through some of Scotland's most mystical places to find a cold-blooded murderer. And as the story unfolds, even they are surprised by the answers it reveals about what pushes a human being to murder.