A vanishing corpse; a mistrustful policeman; a celebrated archaeologist and TV personality involved in the macabre rites of a primitive religious sect - these are just some of the dark ingredients of a novel whose every page is vibrant with menace.

P. M. Hubbard has a disturbing talent for evoking terror in the most unlikely settings: in this case, a sleepy English village is shown to conceal a pit of horror, a terrifying nightmare world that destroys all who would uncover its secrets.