DI Jan Talantire is called to a cottage in Ilfracombe, where the female occupant is found dead, impaled with a crucifix. The woman, who had been renting the house for a few months, is well known locally. Documents found at her house indicate her name is Ruth Lyle.

The name means nothing to the young PC who found her, but DI Talantire knows that this cannot be true. Fifty years earlier, sixteen-year-old Ruth Lyle was murdered – stabbed by a crucifix, in exactly the same location. It is impossible for this to be the same woman, and yet all the records are a match.

With a brutal killer at large, DI Talantire must work quickly to solve the most complicated case of her career: how can a woman die twice?