Jackson Brody has settled in a tiny seaside village in north Yorkshire, where he is sometimes kept company by his son and decrepit Labrador, and is sadly awaiting his daughter's wedding. While doing the chore of being a private investigator - mostly collecting evidence of adultery - Jackson one day meets a completely desperate man on a crumbling cliff. Giving him a helping hand in the literal and figurative sense, Jackson involuntarily gets involved in the investigation of terrible crimes that have been happening under the nose of the police for many years, and their people are doing the most decent and respected. Simultaneously with Jackson, this ominous tangle called the "magic circle" unravels his old Edinburgh acquaintance, to whom he owes his life, is an polymath and by no means a baby Reggie Dich...