In a small coastal British town, Norfolk, a maniac is at work: he kills women and mutilates the body in a specific way. Another murder occurs. This time, the victim is a local woman activist, whose death many had wished for. The distinctive signs on the victim’s body indicate that the murder was committed by the maniac. But the investigators begin to doubt the identity of the killer. Was it really the maniac, or was it one of the town’s respectable residents who tried to disguise his murder as the maniac’s doing?