In the West Country port of Tradmouth, D.S Wesley Peterson is investigating the brutal murder of a young woman on a cliff path and searching for a missing toddler.  Meanwhile, archeologist Neil Watson is excavating a merchant’s house nearby and finds the bodies of a woman and child, both strangled.  As more information comes to hand, Wesley suspects that these deaths, though centuries apart, are strangely and tragically linked by the age-old motives of jealousy, sexual obsessions and desperate longing.  And the pressure is on if he is to avert further tragedy.