St Benjamin's Museum of Pathology is the greatest of its kind. Any death occurring within its walls would have created ripples within the academic world, but the death of Nikki Exner is far from being ordinary. Raped, and then grotesquely executed, her theatrical murder horrifies everyone. John Eisenmenger, a former forensic pathologist, finds himself dragged unwillingly into the Exner case, despite his desire to forget the awfulness he has had to endure in his past professional life. The police have fingered a suspect for the murder but Eisenmenger thinks they are wrong. The results of his second autopsy just don't add up to the findings of the first. Teaming up with solicitor Helena Flemming - who has her own personal reasons for wanting to prove the police wrong - Eisenmenger sets out to discover what really did happen to Nikki Exner. And during the course of this pursuit of the truth both Eisenmenger and Flemming find there is much more at stake than uncovering the identity of a murderer: there are scores to be settled, demons to be exorcised, and, not least, vengeance to be had.