"He could feel it in the blackness, a difference in atmosphere, a sense of evil, of things hidden." Amy Snowden, in middle age, has long since settled into a lonely life in the Yorkshire town of Gunnarshaw, until to her neighbours' surprise she suddenly marries a much younger man. Months later, Amy is found dead apparently by her own hand and her husband, Wright, has disappeared. Sergeant Caleb Cluff silent, watchful, a man at home in the bleak moorland landscape of Gunnarshaw must find the truth about the couple's unlikely marriage, and solve the riddle of Amy's death.