A dedicated doctor has set up a waiting mortuary on the borders of Kensal Green Cemetery, where corpses are left to decompose before burial to reassure clients that no-one can be buried alive. He collapses and dies, apparently of natural causes, but on the same night one of his most reliable employees goes missing.
Frances Doughty, a young sleuth with a reputation for solving knotty cases, is engaged to find the missing man, but nothing is as it seems. Suspicions of blackmail, fraud and murder lead to a gruesome exhumation in the catacombs, with shocking results.
