Sharon Priest is on the moors in a flimsy red dress and spindly high-heels. It is cold, very cold, as a snowstorm sweeps the moors and Leek. But Sharon doesn't feel the cold ...

Neither does Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy, for she is at the annual Legal Ball fending off Randall Pelham who wants her to find his missing daughter Deborah. It is not Deborah but Sharon who soon concentrates Joanna's mind.

The thaw sets in, and Sharon's frozen body and its horrific injury reveal that Joanna has a murder on her hands. And not just one, either …