Detective Sophie Allen teams up with Somerset’s Criminal Investigation Department to solve an intricate mystery full of buried secrets. Detective Sophie Allen’s daughter discovers the body of a reclusive tramp in remote woodland in Dorset. He’s been dead for a week. Sophie and her team try to piece together something about his life, but progress is slow. No one is quite what they seem . . .

Then a hidden package is discovered near his rudimentary shelter. The police also find out that someone has been in the area asking about the tramp recently. A picture begins to emerge. He was an important member of a commune that had a three-year existence on a farm on the Quantock Hills in Somerset more than decade earlier. What happened in the commune and why are people still dying because of it?