Five years ago in the village of Melford, a local lord, Sir Roger Chapeley, was executed for a spate of vicious murders. But now other young girls have been violated and garrotted, and the dead lord's son, Maurice, insists that a miscarriage of justice has taken place. As if in support of his assertion, someone is exacting their own kind of justice as, one by one, the leaders of the jury which sent the lord to the gibbet are brutally murdered. Edward of England sends his chief clerk, Sir Hugh Corbett, to Melford to discover the truth. Seeking connections between the deaths, Corbett faces the difficult task of unveiling the secrets of a distrustful community who it seems increasingly likely are the victims of a serial murderer. But who then is killing the jurors? One thing is certain, whoever the killer, or killers, may be, they will do anything to stop their identity being revealed... The twelfth book in the wonderful Hugh Corbett series.