The Serpent and the Peacock

The discovery in a London cemetery of the body of a young woman in a crypt by some children sparks off a murder enquiry with ritual killing/occult connotations. The police begin their investigations and a female police detective, Eve Hallam, is assigned to the case by the new Senior Investigating Officer, a former colleague called Roger Hamilton who now outranks her.

Unfortunately her ability to investigate the murder is hampered by the fact that she is openly sceptical about any belief in the supernatural and witchcraft. She feels that the aura of the occult or Satanism surrounding the crime is masking the murderer's real motive. Her mind is therefore closed off to any possibilities that border on the outlandish. Roger however is gradually given reason to believe that there is more to the murder than meets the eye.

Eve doesn't really want to believe that there might be a more esoteric reason behind the murder she is investigating. She just wants a simple murder investigation; something she can solve and re-establish her struggling career. Instead, she finds herself being drawn into a web of ancient mystery far beyond her desire or ability to fully comprehend.

The investigation of the crime is further impeded by the emerging presence of a mysterious, powerful and very influential group whose presence in the investigation constantly dogs her footsteps as she plods from one lead to another. It suits their purpose to have the police do the time consuming leg-work, but at the same time, the situation is complicated by the necessity to keep their true motives from the public eye.

After a while her boss Roger begins to suspect that this group either have something directly to do with the crime or, at the very least, they are in possession of some knowledge that would help them solve it. However the more the he tries to find out about them, the less he actually gets to know.

Circumstances make strange bedfellows and the murderer, the mysterious group, Roger Hamilton, Eve and a spiritual healer called Jack Goddard find themselves involved in a dramatic chase which goes from Egypt thence to Vancouver and finally ends up in a secret valley hidden deep in the mountains of northern Kurdistan.

Eve and Roger find themselves desperately trying to keep their lives, their sanity and the investigation on track whilst being constantly and tantalisingly side-tracked by the mysterious group, whose origins ultimately turn out to lie in the most ancient of stories and stretch back to antediluvian times.