1969. In an era of free love and rebellion, a dead body is discovered among the detritus of a recently concluded rock festival—a beautiful young woman stabbed so savagely through the chest that a piece of her heart was sliced off.

Now, back to the present. A freelance journalist, a stranger to the region, is savagely bludgeoned to death in a shocking act of violence with no apparent motive.

Two murders separated by four decades are investigated by two very different but equally haunted investigators—one, a casualty of war unable to come to terms with a confusing new world; the other, a rogue policeman harbouring ghosts of his own. But the truth behind a grisly present-day slaying may be hidden in the amplified, drug-induced fog of a notorious past. We find Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks propelled into the darkest shadows of the peace, love, and rock 'n' roll generation.