Norman Openheim is an American veteran of the D Day Landings on a sentimental journey with his old unit to their West Country base. His body is the last one archaeologist Neil Watson expects to find in the ruins of an old chantry chapel...

Neil naturally turns to his old friend from student days, Detective Sergeant Wesley Peterson, for help. Ironically, both men are looking at an invading force - Wes, the WWII Yanks, and Neil, a group of shipwrecked Spaniards reputed to have met a sticky end at the hands of outraged locals as they limped from the wreckage of the great Armada. Local memories are retentive, and Wes is soon caught up in old accusations, resentments, and romances from fifty years before. But the coolness of Openheim's wife Dorinda, and her reliance on a fellow veteran in the party, offer an all-too-familiar motive for murder.

As if that is not enough, a belligerent group of homeless youths are also under suspicion: then another veteran's wife disappears. Wes's case grows more perplexing, while Neil uncovers a tragic story from the distant past. Over four hundred years apart, two strangers in a strange land have died violently - could the same motives of hatred, jealousy, and revenge be at work? Wes is running out of time to find out...