Arriving on the English island of Alderney for a literary festival, Ex-Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne and his sidekick, author Anthony Horowitz, soon meet the other guests: a bestselling children's author, a French poet, a TV chef, a blind psychic, and a war historian—along with a group of ornery locals feuding over a disruptive power line. When a local grandee is found dead, Hawthorne and Horowitz become embroiled in their third case, after The Sentence Is Death. The island is locked down, no one is allowed on or off, and it soon becomes horribly clear that a murderer lurks in their midst. But who?