An embattled community faces a dangerous murderer. Is he living in their midst or is he an outsider on the prowl?

'Minette Walters is in slick form with this tale of foul deeds at the Manor House.' DAILY TELEGRAPH

When elderly Ailsa Lockyer-Fox is found dead in her garden, dressed only in nightclothes, the finger of suspicion points at her wealthy, landowning husband, Colonel James Lockyer-Fox. A Coroner's inquest gives a verdict of 'natural causes' but the gossip surrounding James refuses to go away. Why? Because he's guilty? Or because resentful women rule the roost in the isolated Dorset village where he lives? Shenstead has become a ghost village and, with only five houses in permanent occupation, it's a place of too few people and too many secrets.

Into this embattled community comes a group of New Age travellers with dreams of laying claim to a tract of disputed land, bordering the Lockyer-Fox estate. Their leader, Fox Evil, is a man of contradictions - charismatic, unpredictable - until he demonstrates that acquiring a stake in Shenstead is the least of his intentions.