The Thornford Regis May Fayre is in full swing. But inside the empty village hall, a huge Japanese drum has been sliced open - and inside is the bludgeoned body of the choir director's beautiful nineteen-year-old daughter. Father Tom Christmas, still haunted by the tragedy that left him a widower and his young daughter motherless, soon realizes that this village is not the idyllic refuge he'd hoped for ... and that the killer must be one of his parishioners.