When Kirsten Harbourn is found strangled on her wedding day, DI Wesley Peterson makes some alarming discoveries. Kirsten was being pursued by a stalker and she had dark secrets her fiancé knew nothing about. But Kirsten's wasn't the only wedding planned to take place that day. At Morbay register office a terrified young girl makes her wedding vows but a few days later, her bridegroom is found dead. Wesley suspects that his death and his bride's subsequent disappearance might be linked to Kirsten's murder. Meanwhile a skeleton is found buried in a farmer's field a field that once belonged to the family of an Elizabethan playwright. Is his bloodthirsty play, "The Fair Wife of Padua", a confession to murder?
