Poor Handy has a nasty habit of stumbling across the newly deceased. You could say it's almost as though he was cursed. First he discovered his own mother's body, then that of a friend and finally his son. Now it has happened again. When a frozen body is discovered deep in a wood in the Vale of York, DCI George Hennessey is called in to investigate. He soon discovers that the body is that of a young Russian student who had disappeared many years earlier. Tests reveal that she had been murdered before being frozen.

A series of leads causes George to wonder if there is any significance in the deceased's connection with a suspect dating agency. And who is the mysterious street beggar who sleeps in the woodland just outside the city? And finally, why would an elderly and wealthy gentleman be so keen to admit to the crime?