When the body of a brutally beaten girl is found in a quarry during a hedonistic hippy festival near Kingsmarkham, Wexford is first on the scene. The victim's face has been pulped by the back-end of a bottle, but who, in this atmosphere of peace and love, could be capable of such violence? The body is that of local girl turned stripper Dawn Stonor, but it is the unlikely link between this ill-fated girl and the mysterious folk-singer Zeno Vedast that piques Wexford's interest. Through an intricate web of lies and deceit, Wexford uncovers a history of love and hate that began years earlier. In all his years of police work, he has never been faced with a crime of such desperate passion.