Arriving on the English island of Alderney for a literary festival, ex-Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne and his sidekick, author Anthony Horowitz, meet the other guests: a bestselling children's author, a French poet, a TV chef, a blind psychic, and a historian—along with ornery locals feuding over a disruptive power line. When a grandee is found dead, Hawthorne and Horowitz become embroiled in their third case, after The Sentence Is Death. The island is locked down, and it soon becomes horribly clear that a murderer lurks in their midst. But who?