It's Christmas, and Constable Hamish Macbeth is one big bundle of misery.

With a cold in his head and no place to go for the holidays, Hamish snaps up the invitation of gorgeous Jane Wetherby to spend Christmas at her Scottish island health farm--and determine whether someone really is trying to kill her.

In his heart, Hamish believes the lady is a wee bit daft; but, arriving on lonely Eileencraig, he feels a prickle of foreboding. The locals are openly threatening; and the other guests, especially a terrible snob named Heather Todd, are barely civil.

So when Heather meets an untimely end, Hamish feels he hasn't far to look for her killer. There's just one problem: all the guests were in the house when Heather vanished. Not even the weirdly mysterious mumbo jumbo that abounds on Eileencraig can account for that mystery...