Inspector Alan Banks is investigating the murder of a freelance music journalist who was working on a feature about the Mad Hatters for MOJO magazine. Aging rock superstars, the Mad Hatters have once again been brushed by tragedy. At a huge outdoor rock festival in Yorkshire in 1969, a young woman was brutally murdered-and she seemed to have ties to the Mad Hatters. Banks finds he has to delve into the past to find out exactly what hornet's nest the journalist inadvertently stirred up.