In North Devon, Detective Inspector Matthew Venn stands outside the crematorium as his father's funeral takes place. The day Matthew turned his back on the strict Christian sect in which he grew up, he lost his family too. Now he's back, not just to mourn his father at a distance, but to take charge of his first major case in the Two Rivers region: a complex place not quite as idyllic as tourists suppose. A body has been found on the beach at Crow Point: a man, stabbed to death, with a tattoo of an albatross on his neck. The investigation will take Matthew straight back into the community he left behind, and the deadly secrets that lurk there.