A chance DNA test proves without doubt what DS Mike Fielding has always known - that the man tried for the barbaric murder of local Devon girl Angela Philips twenty years before, the man who walked free, was the Beast of Dartmoor. It is a bitter victory. Because the law of double jeopardy means James O'Donnell can't be tried again. He is still a free man. For Joanna Bartlett, the once brilliant but now jaded crime correspondent who covered the case two decades before, the findings stir memories she's tried to forget. Not only of the terrible murder she can't bear to remember - but of Fielding, the maverick detective who shared her obsession with the tragedy. There has been a shocking miscarriage of justice - one that will now torment those who have suffered since the murder. Fielding, his career irrevocably damaged by the case, is determined to see justice done. And Joanna and the media are his means. But will the killer ever be punished?

A chance DNA test proves without doubt what DS Mike Fielding has always known - that the man tried for the barbaric murder of local Devon girl Angela Philips twenty years before, the man who walked free, was the Beast of Dartmoor. It is a bitter victory. Because the law of double jeopardy means James O'Donnell can't be tried again. He is still a free man.