His wife was unfaithful and Frank Elder, inspector in the Investigative Division, dropped out of everything to take refuge in the furthest place he could reach. But the ghosts of the past follow him, especially the ghost of sixteen year old Susan Blacklock, missing for years. There were two suspects in the case then, Donald and McKiernan, who were arrested and imprisoned a year after Susan’s disappearance for raping and murdering another girl. When one of them is released early, Elder decides to leave his melancholy den to return to the scene of the crime. Another girl is atrociously murdered and the ex-cop finds himself forced to take up his life and his work: obsessed by the killer’s messages and by his own ghosts, Elder must fight so that the people he loves most in the world are not swallowed by the black heart of Evil.