When Georgina, eight-year-old daughter of businessman Miles Dewhurst, is kidnapped, DI Charlie Priest and his colleagues at Heckley police station soon start to fear the worst. Dewhurst himself is devastated and willing to give up everything to raise the ransom that might be required. But Charlie is not convinced that Dewhurst is all that he seems. Meanwhile, these are dangerous times for clergymen. Two are found dead under suspicious circumstances and a third is murdered by a shotgun blast. The deaths are linked by a picture of a Destroying Angel mushroom, left beside the body of the most recent victim, but why would a serial killer focus on men of the cloth? As he races against time to find Georgina, and happens upon the first real clue in the hunt for the Mushroom Man, events take a dramatic personal turn, for Charlie is more deeply embroiled in one of the cases than he realises.