For seventeen years, the Cambridgeshire hamlet of Jude's Ferry has lain abandoned, requisitioned by the Government for military training. In its thousand-year-old history, it had been famous for one thing — never having recorded a single crime.

But when local reporter Philip Dryden joins the Territorial Army on exercise in the empty village, its spotless history is literally blown apart. For the TA's shells reveal a hidden cellar beneath the old pub. And inside the cellar hangs a skeleton, a noose around its neck . . .

Two days later, a man is pulled from the reeds in the river near Ely — he has no idea who he is or how he got there. But he knows the words 'Jude's Ferry' are important, and he knows he is afraid...