Marianne Gray is getting married in Glamis Castle and her mother is in a state of superstitious terror. To English lecturer, Gina Gray, Glamis means Macbeth, and Macbeth means weirdness and woe - bad luck at best, and murder at worst.

Nobody else is worried, but – as Gina says – why take the risk?

She is right, of course. Murder strikes, and Gina, who prides herself on her success as an amateur detective, quickly finds that there is no place for her as a sleuth this time - the Scottish police have cast her as their prime suspect.

Isolated and helpless, Gina can only sit by an idyllic loch-side and watch and wait while Detective Superintendent David Scott, her on/off lover of many years, pursues the London connections to the killing, and Freda, her fifteen-year-old granddaughter, confronts the terrifying possibility of a long-buried crime that could blow her family apart…