Multiple murder strikes at the very heart of the desolate Somerset Levels in the midst of the worst snow storm to hit the south west of England in more than a generation. On their way home from a short break, Detective Sergeant Kate and her partner, Hayden, are stranded in a lonely country lane when Kate’s car breaks down. Forced to take shelter in the isolated Warneford Hall Hotel, which is allegedly haunted by a faceless ghost, the detectives find themselves stuck there for several days, cut off from all lines of communication with the outside world.
When one of a group of former university graduates staying at the hotel drowns in the hotel’s lake in suspicious circumstances, Kate and Hayden are pitched into a complex murder investigation, which is to tax every ounce of resolve they possess without any prospect of backup and with a ghostly apparition watching their every move from the shadows. As the body count starts to mount, they find that they are up against a clever, twisted adversary who has no intention of quitting until whatever perverse force is driving them is satisfied.
But as they delve ever deeper into the secrets buried in the gloom of the old hotel - in particular behind the locked door of the mysterious clocktower - the hunters end up becoming the hunted, with the deadly trap that has already been set for them promising to abruptly end their investigation along with their lives in truly horrific style…