Ninth in the popular mystery series set in medieval Glasgow, featuring notary Gil Cunningham and his wife Alys. A young woman suffering from melancholy has been brought to Glasgow by her family to seek the intercession of St. Mungo. Local tradition has it that if the sufferer is bound to St. Mungo's great cross in the old kirk yard overnight, the saint will provide a cure.
But in the morning, the family discovers the young woman hanging dead in her bonds, her neck broken and her face unrecognizable from a savage beating. What's more, as Gil and his wife's father, Maister Pierre Mason discover, someone then knotted a cord around the dead woman's throat and throttled her. Gil, as quaestor (official investigator) for the Archbishop of Glasgow, is charged with discovering the murderer, but it seems his first duty must be to determine if the corpse is indeed who she appears to be.
In addition to this murder, Gil is also drawn into the matter of food and supplies disappearing from the cathedral storehouse. With great reluctance, the priests in charge of the storehouse have concluded this is an inside job, and they must look among their own for the thieves. And Gil misses the help he is accustomed to receive from Alys, who is distracted by tension between herself and her father's new wife that has disturbed all their usual domestic arrangements.
Two more murders occur, in even more bizarre and horrifying circumstances as Gil struggles to piece together all these disparate threads and find the pattern that will explain them all.
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