When the body of Pauline Brent is found hanging from an ancient yew tree in a Devon village churchyard the police suspect foul play. But Pauline was the local doctor's receptionist, well liked and with no real enemies...and yet someone killed her.

DS Wesley Peterson is determined to discover the truth and it is history that provides him with a clue. His archaeologist friend, Neil Watson, has excavated a corpse at a nearby dig; a body that has been buried at a crossroads, on unhallowed ground. Legend has it that a young woman was publicly executed, hanged from the churchyard yew centuries before. Has Neil discovered her remains? And why was she buried with a collection of rare medieval sculptures?

It seems an unlikely coincidence - two women hanged from the same tree five centuries apart. Wesley is forced to consider the possibility that the killer also knows the tree's dark history. Has Pauline been executed rather than murdered - and if so for what crime?

To catch a dangerous killer Wesley has to discover as much as he can about the victim. But Pauline Brent appears to have been a woman with few friends, no relatives and a past she has carefully tried to hide.