A ravaged wood, a man in uniform long dead--this is not a World War One battlefield but Wanwood House, a pharmaceutical research centre.

Peter Pascoe attends his grandmother's funeral, and scattering her ashes leads him, too, into war-torn woods in search of his great-grandfather, who fought and died in Passchendaele. Seeing the wood for the trees is the problem for Andy Dalziel when he finds himself fancying an animal rights activist despite her possible complicity in a murderous assault and her appalling taste in whisky. A mind-bending puzzle leading us on the wild side of the pastoral.