Laura Niven, a former New York journalist turned thriller-writer, returns to Oxford University, where she studied twenty years earlier, to help her daughter, Joanna, settle in to life as a first-year student. Visiting Oxford also prompts her to journey into her own personal history, and Laura stays with her former lover, Philip Bainbridge, who is now a police-scene photographer. The night before she is due to return to New York, Philip is called to a murder scene just outside of Oxford. The victim is a young woman. Her throat has been slashed and her heart has been cut out of her body. In her chest cavity, the police find an ancient-looking gold coin. The next day another murder is discovered, and the MO is the same except that the girl's brain has been removed and a silver coin has been left in the bowl of her skull. Compelled to investigate these horrific murders, Laura soon discovers that they are not just confined to the here and now. As she follows slender leads a story gradually emerges that connects the members of the Royal Society in the 1600s
