A long-ago promise made to a dying man leads forensics ace Enzo Macleod, a Scot who's been teaching in France for many years, to the study of a man murdered nearly twenty years ago. The study has been preserved, untouched, since the man's murder. The dead man left several clues there designed to reveal his killer's identity to his son, but ironically the son died soon after the father and never saw his father's message.

So begins the fourth of seven cold cases written up in a bestselling book by Parisian journalist Roger Raffin, cases Enzo rashly boasted he could solve (he's been successful with the first three).

This case takes Enzo to a tiny island off the coast of Brittany in France, where he must confront the hostility of locals who have no desire to see the infamous murder back in the headlines.?An attractive widow, a man charged but acquitted of the murder (but still the viable suspect), a crime scene frozen in time, a dangerous hell hole by the cliffs, and a collection of impenetrable messages make this one of Enzo's most difficult cases.