When a young woman turns up dead in a peat bog, Teresa Lupo, a maverick pathologist, thinks she's got the victim of an ancient pagan ritual on her hands. She's wrong. Leo Falcone knows this case is recent history and the horror is still very much alive.

So begins an investigation that will take the police deep into the dark underworld of modern-day Rome's most disturbing and sinister secrets.

Nic Costa is trying to stay off the drink. Gianni Peroni used to work vice until he was caught in one of his own department's stings. Emilio Neri, the local Mafia boss, can't trust his own son and Vergil Wallis, the former American mobster, is refusing to talk. Meanwhile, someone is trying very hard to kill the pathologist. And now another beautiful young woman has gone missing ...