In the green depths of spring, morning breaks on a woman splayed in a bed of flowers - her eyes wide, her neck broken. Her death is a mystery; so is the woman herself. But as Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his team peer into the dark corners of the victim"s past, they expose a secret that rots at the very heart of their community - a secret that will implicate someone they"ve trusted for years. And as Gamache knows too well, in the flickering shadows of death, the truth may be just a trick of the light.