When a teenage girl is strangled and left for dead on a lonely country lane, by an attacker she describes has having the head of a dog, the police are baffled. But when the body of another young woman is found mutilated and wrapped in a white linen sheet, DI Wesley Peterson suspects that the killer is performing an ancient ritual linked to Anubis, the jackal-headed Egyptian god of death and mummification.

Meanwhile, archaeologist Neil Watson has been called to Varley Castle to catalogue the collection of Edwardian amateur Egyptologist, Sir Frederick Varley. However, as his research progresses, Neil discovers that Wesley's strange murder case bears sinister similarities to four murders that took place near Varley Castle in 1903 - murders said to have been committed by Sir Frederick's son.

As the Jackal Man's identity remains a frustrating enigma, it seems that the killer has yet another victim in mind. A victim close to Wesley Peterson himself . . .