Following an acrimonious split from her husband, Helen Pascoe decides to take her three children away from London to live in a lovely old house on the coast near Falmouth in Cornwall. The family settle in to their new life quickly, and begin to feel comfortable and happy once more, when the local community is stunned by a murder in its midst. A young man has been found stabbed, propped up against an ancient standing stone, at the crossroads of two narrow lanes overlooking the water - a place where legend says a gibbet once stood. It is DCI Channon's territory, and he soon finds that the victim is connected to the Pascoe family, as well as to other residents of what was once a humble fishing village.