Julia Hamill is gardening one afternoon in rural Massachusetts when her spade strikes something soft and unyielding - not a rock but a human skull. Medical examiner Maura Isles quickly determines that the skeleton, that of a woman, dates back to the early 1800s."But too much time has passed," Maura warns Julia. "We may never know the whole story of how she died."
Boston in the 1830s is a place of disease and pestilence: and no one is more aware of this than Norris Marshall, a student at Harvard Medical School who is forced to support himself by performing the most secretive job of all. Norris is a resurrectionist, a body-snatcher, who procures cadavers from grave robbers in order to further his study of human anatomy. Soon he finds himself hunting the most notorious killer of his time, a shadowy figure who flits through graveyards and glittering ballrooms. What he does not realize is that the killer is far closer than he thinks.
