Pathologist Nora Gavin is the first to be called in as workers at a vast peat extraction site in the Irish midlands uncover a long-buried, badly damaged corpse. The body has apparently been strangled, slashed and drowned - the ritual 'triple death' of Ireland's blood-soaked pagan past. But moments after Nora arrives a much more recent victim is discovered. Like the ancient body, this new corpse seems to have suffered the triple death.