In the murky days of the 17th century, gory events unfold on the Alpine foothills, in the lands between the Duchy of Milan and the southern bailiwicks of Switzerland. Maddalena de Buziis is the only survivor of a beastly series of abductions, rapes, and murders. The culprit is the Wizard of the Canton, a mysterious practitioner of necromancy, who has fled Vimercate for the safety of Switzerland. The story of the Wizard is told in the previous novel (The Girl Snatcher). As a traumatised Maddalena struggles to recover from her misadventure, someone starts to hunt her down, determined to find her at all cost. Her pursuer belongs to the fiercest criminal gang that preys on the lands between Italy and Switzerland. The man behind it all, though, is a dark mystic devising his eerie schemes from his bleak abode on Monte Generoso, known as l’Uomo dei Trii Böc (“The Man of the Three Holes”).