New York investigator Miriam Glass' long-time colleague, archaeologist Ignacio Lopez, is murdered in his Merida office in the dead of night while examining some recently found Maya artifacts. The murder weapon is an enormous and ancient obsidian axe and the murder is exceptionally grisly. Miriam assists Capitan Jose Luis Contreras of the Yucatan police in finding the murderer. Along the way, Captain Contreras is abducted and left to die in a Maya cave inhabited by none-too-friendly spirits, a group of men stealing artifacts are confronted on a remote roadway by Maya warriors, and Miriam finds herself chained to a bed wearing only five-inch gold stiletto heels. The book is about the theft of Maya artifacts from an important dig. It is also about what happens when a group of foreigners moves into the intimate center of a culturally naive Maya village.