Each year at Halloween, high on the Cornish cliffs, a life-size effigy of a man is strapped to a blazing wheel and run into the sea—a re-enactment of a hideous ancient legend of human sacrifice. So when Jonathan Riddle, a respected local builder and undertaker, disappears, it seems all too likely that his corpse has gone the way of the historic “scapegoat.†As Wycliffe begins to investigate Riddle’s family life, more and more unpleasant facts begin to emerge, until eventually he’s left with an incredible, seemingly impossible, solution.
