When Peter "Mad Max" Maxwell takes his kids from Leighford High on an archaeological dig, they uncover a grave. But the corpse was not Saxon and it wasn't a king, this was an altogether more recent death. Then a policeman on the case is found dead at the wheel of his car. What knowledge did he possess that led to his death? And does his colleague, Maxwell's partner Jacquie Carpenter, unwittingly have the same information? Maxwell locks horns with the great and not so good in a vicious world of skulduggery, academic back-biting and religious mania which can only end in murder.