In Victoria, 1869, a mutilated body is discovered in the forest: Dr McCrory, an American <U+2018>alienist<U+2019> whose methods include phrenology, mesmerism, and sexual-mystical <U+2018>magnetation<U+2019>. Chad Hobbes, newly arrived from England, is the policeman who must solve the crime. Could the murderer be a Tsimshian medicine man, Wiladzap, who is immediately arrested. But everyone who has known McCrory <U+2013> respectable or not <U+2013> has something to hide.