When archaeologist Arnold Landon sets about investigating the secrets of an ancient sea cave on the Northumbrian coast he soon finds himself caught up in the violence directed against asylum seekers dispersed to a northern village. Then the remains of a thirty-year-old murder are uncovered, with unexpected and violent repercussions, and when a second body is found echoes of the atrocities at Auschwitz reverberate through the cave and the mysterious cleft on the headland known as Hades Gate. It is on that illnamed headland that Arnold finally comes face to face with the truth about the brutal past, and its consequences for the present.