Detective-sergeant Raymond Burke of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police iscoping with post traumatic stress disorder brought on by the horrificritual murder of his young son and the subsequent suicide of his wife.Alcoholism, despair, and institutionalization have been his fate, and,three years after the death, he gets his first substantial clue, arepeat murder with all of the same ritual observances, none of whichwere disclosed to the public, suggesting the same murderer who took hisson's life. But nobody believes Ray.