March, 1605. Country doctor and former ship’s surgeon Gabriel Taverner has embarked on his next adventure. After discovering that the debilitating injury he sustained years ago has lost its power to induce chronic seasickness, he became impatient to leave Devon once more. He finds himself in the service of Walter Haverleigh, a wealthy and successful merchant, who engaged Gabriel to tend the crew of the Luipaard on her voyage to the Eastern Seas.

As the months and years of Gabriel’s absence continue, his family and friends struggle with the replacement physician he engaged before his hasty departure. Doctor Maudsley Cheverell has turned out to be incompetent, arrogant and self-serving. When one morning his dead body is found in a ditch, it seems that nobody will mourn him or regret his untimely death.

However, when the body is examined, it is apparent that Cheverell was tortured by the application of a specific method from the East . . . Is there a connection to Gabriel and his time in Asia? And where is Gabriel? Why has the quiet peace of England’s Tavy Valley been disrupted by a sinister plot and, most crucially, will everyone come out of it alive?