Detective Ian Rutledge searches for leads in a cold case murder. Avebury is a quiet village in the English countryside. Will the detective be able to find out what has been causing such a stir there?

A young woman has been murdered next to a mysterious, hooded, figure-like stone, but no one recognizes her, or admits to it. And how did she get there? Despite a thorough investigation, it appears that her killer has simply vanished.

Investigating the murder of an unknown victim who was found within a great prehistoric circle near Stonehenge, Rutledge follows unreliable clues to an impossible conclusion that places him on the wrong side of Scotland Yard.

"Scotland Yard detective Ian Rutledge is assigned one of the most baffling investigations of his career--a cold murder case with an unidentified victim and a cold trail with few clues to follow. Chief Inspector Brian Leslie, a respected colleague of Ian Rutledge's, is sent to Avebury, a village set inside a great prehistoric stone circle not far from Stonehenge. A young woman has been murdered next to a mysterious, hooded, figure-like stone, but no one recognizes her--or admits to it. And how did she get there? Despite a thorough investigation, it appears that her killer has simply vanished. Rutledge, returning from the conclusion of a case involving another apparently unknown woman, is asked to take a second look at Leslie's inquiry, to see if he can identify this victim. But Rutledge is convinced Chief Superintendent Jameson only hopes to tarnish his earlier success once he also fails. Where to begin? He too finds very little to go on in Avebury, slowly widening his search beyond the

"Inspector Ian Rutledge's 22nd case revolves around two young women found dead in utterly unexpected places. Scheduled to give evidence in an ongoing investigation, Rutledge can't go to the village of Avebury--where a body has been found stabbed to death in the center of a circle of prehistoric stones--in the place of Chief Inspector Brian Leslie when Rutledge's nemesis, Chief Superintendent Markham, sends Leslie there when he'd been looking forward to a couple of days off. Instead, Rutledge ends up going to the Shropshire village of Tern Bridge, where a woman eventually identified as Bath schoolmistress Serena Palmer has been stabbed and tossed into a grave dug the day before for someone else."