Sir Lawrence Linwood is dead. More accurately, he was murdered-savagely beaten to death in his own study with a mediaeval mace. The murder calls home his three adopted children: Alan, an archeologist; Roger, an engineer; and Caroline, a journalist. But his heirs soon find that his last testament contains a strange proviso-that his estate shall go to the heir who solves his murder.

To secure their future, each Linwood heir must now dig into the past. As their suspicion mounts-of each other and of peculiar strangers in the churchless town of Linwood Hollow-they come to suspect that the perpetrator lurks in the mysterious origins of their own birth.