In the green depths of spring, morning breaks on  a women splayed in a bed of flowers - her eyes wide, her neck broken.
Her death is a mystery; so is the woman herself.  But as Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his team peer into the dark corners of the victim's past, they expose a secret that rots at the very heart of their community - a secret that will implicate someone they've trused for years.
And as Gamache knows too well, in the flickering shadows of death, the truth may be just a trick of the light.