A beautiful June day in the Yorkshire Dales & a group of children are spending the last of their half-term freedom swimming in the river near Hindswell Woods. But the idyll is shattered by their discovery of a man's body hanging from a tree. DI Annie Cabott soon discovers he is Mark Hardcastle the well-liked & successful set designer for the Eastvale Theatre's current production of Othello. Everything points to suicide & Annie is mystified. Why would such a man want to take his own life? Then Annie's investigation leads to another shattering discovery & DCI Alan Banks is called back from the idyllic weekend he had planned with his new girlfriend. Banks soon finds himself plunged into a shadow-world where nothing is what it seems where secrets & deceit are the norm & where murder is seen as the solution to a problem. The deeper he digs the more he discovers that the monster he has awakened will extend its deadly reach to his friends & family. Nobody is safe.