A tractor is stolen from a vacationing farmer's barn and, along the way, people are murdered. An accident of a truck carrying animal remains turns particularly gruesome when human remains are found at the accident site. Good police work ties the stolen tractor in with the murder and as people are questioned, the criminal circle widens. DCI Banks and his team do their duty and give the reader a look at both crimes and criminals AND at the lives of those charged with solving those crimes.