Inspector John Rebus, overseeing plans for the seating of the first Scottish parliament in three hundred years, is dismayed to find his job complicated by the discovery of a long-dead body in a fireplace at Queensbury House, the mysterious suicide of a homeless man, and the murder of an up-and-coming politician.

"Former Detective John Rebus' retirement is disrupted once again when skeletal remains are identified as a private investigator who went missing over a decade earlier. The remains, found in a rusted car in the East Lothian woods, not far from Edinburgh, quickly turn into a cold case murder investigation. Rebus' old friend, Siobhan Clarke is assigned to the case, but neither of them could have predicted what buried secrets the investigation will uncover. Rebus...