A rainy night in the cathedral city of Hereford. A grisly murder is linked by DI Francis Bliss with the campaign to preserve an ancient ritual site. And then Bliss is sidelined by his boss. What's going on?

In the village of Ledwardine, Merrily Watkins stands between an extreme fundamentalist Christian and an atheist writer known as 'The Devil's Spin Doctor'.

Tensions are rising... and so is the river. Soon Ledwardine will be isolated by floods, cut off with a killer inside - a new kind of killer for a cold new age.