When Crowner John is summoned to the bleak Devonshire moors to investigate the murder of a tin miner he has little idea how difficult this new investigation will prove to be. The victim is a trusted & well-loved overman of Devons most powerful & successful mine owner Walter Knapman. There seems to be only one possible motive
- to sabotage Walters business. But the tinners have their own laws & they are none too pleased at Crowner Johns interference. Especially as their main experience of officials has been with Sheriff Richard de Revelle whose notoriously high taxes keep them in a permanent state of fury & near rebellion. & then Walter disappears. Stephen Acland Walters business rival wastes no time in comforting Walters beautiful wife Joan who appears remarkably unmoved by her husbands disappearance. Meanwhile Walters brother is going frantic with worry.. .or could it be guilt? A decapitated body a missing tinner a disgruntled band of miners & a mad Saxon intent on the destruction of all things Norman. How on earth can Crowner John sort all this out when his wife hates him his mistress has spurned him for a younger man & his clerk is in the grip of a suicidal depression? Only Gwyn Crowner Johns indispensable right-hand man seems to be of any help at all until he is arrested for murder & put on trial for his life.