The War in the West

Larh Thomas is called in to help a rich musician, Paul Roberts, who receives death threats when the remains of an old body are found on land he owns on the wild north coast of Cornwall. The body is from the time of the English Civil War in the seventeenth century and was buried in the middle of a stone circle which is being excavated on the nearby moor. The musician lives in an old fort built into the side of a cliff, which links to ancient mine workings which run down through the cliff to the tiny deserted fishing village below, and up to workings on the moor. The local musicians were demonstrating because Paul Roberts has been writing the soundtrack for a film about the role Cornwall played in the English Civil War, and the local musicians feel their work has been sampled and stolen, and that the film is a Hollywood whitewash of the Cornish independence cause. But two high tides after local police break up a demonstration by local musicians on the beach below the fort, the body of one of the demonstrators is washed up on the rocks, and it looks to the media like she fell from the fort. Lath stays in Paul Robert's house and works with the local police as their investigation uncovers some complicated connections between the girl that died and the female vicar of the local church, connections which mirror the life of the woman who died at the time of the Civil War and was buried in the stone circle. But Larh gets too close to the truth. A radical group called the Pagan Girls kidnap and drug her and she is discovered after days of fog, unconscious and covered in blood next to the body of Paul's young wife, at the top of the mine shaft on the moor. The suspicions against Paul Roberts are now overwhelming and his life and career goes into freefall, and he is arrested for his wife's murder.