A beautiful June day in the Yorkshire Dales, and a group of children are spending the last of their half-term freedom swimming in the river near Hipswell Woods. But the idyll is shattered by their discovery of a mans body, hanging from a tree. DI Annie Cabott soon discovers he is Mark Hardcastle, the well-liked and successful set designer for the Eastvale Theatres current production of Othello. Everything points to suicide, and Annie is mystified. Why would such a man want to take his own life?