A hard-living ex-con is the unlikeliest of role models, but when he meets a troubled fifteen-year-old homeless boy in need of help from a violent and destitute father, Joe is faced with the heartbreaking choice of redemption or ruin.

Ten years ago, Phoebe Maybury's hateful husband David disappeared from Streech Grange. Now, a naked, unidentifiable corpse has been discovered in the icehouse on the Grange and Inspectors Walsh and McLoughlin have to decide whose it is, whether he was murdered ; and who killed him.