When the beautiful Colinette Jones fails to return home for supper and a body turns up half a mile from her house, DI Charlie Priest knows he has got to make the house call that every mother dreads. Elsewhere, Laura Heeley is found dead in a country lane, a single stab wound the only sign of violence. What could connect these two women, apart from their untimely deaths? And what is the link with a tragic sixties rock star? In a town constricted by the foot and mouth outbreak, Priest must find the killer before he strikes again.