A terrible menace broods in the centre of this compelling story. Smooth power like a volume of water sliding through a sluice, pale hair and prominent grey-blue eyes, a huge dynamo spinning so fast that it seems not to move at all. It is the bell man. He is all-powerful and he deals in death. At the cheerfully unconventional offices of Lockhart and Garland all is hustle and bustle. There's very little time for love. Stagestruck Jim Taylor is about to help a famous magician disappear. Fred has plans to use the latest photographic techniques to capture a séance, and Sally Lockhart herself is about to get down to some serious financial investigation in a man's world. Unwittingly each step they take is drawing them all deeper into deadly danger and the chill embrace of the shadow of the north...