Persuaded to start a new life on the North Coast of Cornwall, the peace Miriam expects to find in her fresh beginnings is shattered when her young son, David, makes a grisly find on a wintry beach. Initially, DI Louise (Lou) Neville is brought to the scene as a formality. Such a relic should interest only academics, but the blood-spattered home of Miriam's missing grandmother indicates that those bony remains are a threat - a bizarre 'message in the sand'. From Cornwall to Bristol, St Leonards-on-Sea to Brighton, then Ireland, Miriam and her loved ones, along with Lou and her colleagues, find themselves embroiled in a contest against a malevolence as old as mankind. Under neurotic commands of psychopathic Solomon Jenkyn - a prominent member of an Old Family - his minions strive against their own incompetence to hunt down key members of Miriam's family; one that he sorely underestimates.