For seventeen years, the Cambridgeshire hamlet of Jude's Ferry has lain abandoned, requisitioned by the Ministry of Defence for military training in 1990. The isolated, 1000-year-old community was famous for one thing - never having recorded a single crime. But when local reporter Philip Dryden joins the Territorial Army on exercise in the empty village, its spotless history is literally blown apart. For the TA's shells reveal a hidden cellar beneath the old pub. And inside the cellar hangs a skeleton, a noose around its neck . . . Two days later, a man is pulled from the reeds in the river near Ely - he has no idea who he is or how he got there. But he knows the words 'Jude's Ferry' are important, and he knows he is afraid . . . As the police launch an investigation into the skeleton in the cellar, Dryden is convinced the key to the mystery rests in the last days of the village when passions, prejudices, guilt and hatred all came to a head. Everything leads him back to Jude's Ferry. But who is waiting for him there ?