Scotland Yard?s Inspector Ian Rutledge brought the Great War home with him, and its horrors haunt him still. On New Year?s Eve 1919, he finds a brass cartridge casing, similar to countless others he?d seen on the battlefield, on the steps of a friend?s house. Soon there are more, purposely placed where he is sure to discover them.

Unexpectedly drawn away from London to a small Northamptonshire village, he investigates the strange case of a local constable shot with a bow and arrow in an allegedly spirit-infested wood. Here among the taciturn townsfolk, embroiled in a three-year-old mystery of a vanished young girl, Rutledge hopes to keep his own ghosts at bay.

But his stalker has followed him. And now the emotionally shattered policeman walking the razor?s edge of sanity must somehow keep his balance long enough to discover who is tracking him...and why.