It has been ten years since Jeanie Long was charged with the murder of fifteen-year-old Abigail Mantel. Now residents of the East Yorkshire village of Elvet are disturbed to hear of new evidence proving Jeanie's innocence. Abigail's killer is still at large. For one young woman, Emma Bennett, the revelation brings back haunting memories of her vibrant best friend - and of that fearful winters day when she had discovered her body lying cold in a ditch. As Inspector Vera Stanhope makes fresh enquiries on the peninsula and villagers are hauled back to a time they hoped to forget, tensions begin to mount.
On Long Island, a farmer finds a duck pond turned red with blood. On the Lower East Side, two boys playing at a pier discover a floating human torso wrapped tightly in oilcloth. Blueberry pickers near Harlem stumble upon neatly severed limbs in an overgrown ditch. Clues to a horrifying crime are turning up all over New York, but the police are baffled: There are no witnesses, no motives, no suspects.
