Detailed plot
Prologue. In 1889 London, Arthur Conan Doyle met Oliver Wilde. Wilde tells Doyle a story about a man-eating bear, in Roaring Forks, Colorado. The bear killed and ate 11 miners.
A year after the events recounted in Two Graves , Corrie Swanson is looking for an idea for a thesis, and stumbles upon the story in Conan Doyle’s diary. She writes to Pendergast, who’s resting and recovering in Europe.
She then travels to Roaring Forks and attempts to get permission to view the bodies from the local sheriff, Chief Morris. He takes her up into “The Heights,” a new luxury development. The cemetery was dug up and graves moved so that this development could be built. Corrie manages to view one of the corpses that was eaten by a bear, but the sheriff won’t let her pick up and examine any of the bones. The next day, word comes down that the sheriff can’t grant Corrie permission to view the bodies.
The librarian, Ted Roman, a local ski-bum, tells Corrie that the real power in town is Betty Brown Kermode, and her brother-in-law, Henry Montebello.
Corrie breaks into the storage area with the bodies, and is caught, arrested, and plea bargains a 10-year prison sentence. She writes to Pendergast telling her what she’s done and her situation.
A few days later, Pendergast arrives in Roaring Fork a few days later and embarrasses the town into releasing her and dropping the charges against her.
Jenny Baker, a college student working in the sheriff’s office, is driven home to her parents’ mansion in the Heights. In the house, she and her family are killed, and the killer then burns down the house.
Corrie accepts a job house-sitting a big, abandoned house in the Heights. But she’s not getting paid, and the owner makes her keep the heat at 50 degrees. She goes on a date with Ted Roman, and when she returns to the house, she sees a stray dog. After feeding the dog and letting it sleep at the foot of her bed, as she’s settling down to sleep, she hears noises and spots something on the motion sensors.
Pendergast receives a letter from Tristam. Also an invitation to D’Agosta’s and Laura Hayward’s wedding. Constance is on her way to visit her son. And Pendergast has Mime and the CIA keeping a lookout for any sign of Alban.
After examining some of the corpses that were supposedly killed by a bear, Corrie determines that the bear story is false. They were, rather, set upon, torn to pieces, and then eaten raw. It seems like the deaths were caused by a gang of serial killers.
Captain Stacy Bowdree, descendant of one of the murdered miners, shows up in Roaring Fork and buddies up with Corrie. Corrie invites her to stay with her in the big house where she is house-sitting. Meanwhile, Ms. Kermode contacts her cousin, Daniel Stafford, to dig into the backgrounds of Pendergast, Corrie, and Captain Bowdree. She hopes to find some dirt that she can use in case they come too close to the truth.
There is another house fire, killing an actress and her young daughter. Corrie invites Captain Bowdree to stay with her in the large, cold mansion where she’s house-sitting. Corrie finds an old archive of documents and begins to search through them with the help of an aging, going-to-seed lothario named Wynn Marple. After she insults him, he calls up his friend, Betty Kermode. Turns out that she is related to the Stafford family, who owned much of Roaring Fork back in its mining days.
Pendergast contacts a Sherlock Holmes enthusiast, and member of the Baker Street Irregulars, Roger Kleefisch, to inquire about some aspects of the case that relate to Conan Doyle. He then leaves for London for a few days.
Kermode and Stafford discuss Corrie as a problem—afraid that she might find out more details about the Stafford’s and Roaring Forks past. Stafford says that Kermode should “take care of her” while Pendergast is away. Henry Montebello says that he knows just who to hire to kill Corrie.
Pendergast thinks Conan Doyle hid the missing Sherlock Holmes story, “The Adventure of Aspern Hall,” in his final residence, Covington Grange. He tries to get access by going through a woman who works at the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty: but she denies him access, as the structure is not safe for visitors.
Corrie is shot at as she drives to town, with her windshield getting hit by a bullet. She tells the Sheriff, who says it might have been an accidental shooting by a poacher—but that it also could have been someone targeting her.
The stray dog that Corrie found and is taking care of gets killed on the house, as a warning for her to leave town. Captain Bowdree is acting violently. Corrie moves into a hotel in the town, but is running out of money.
Pendergast finds the Holmes story, and then has Corrie read it. Sir Perceval Aspern is the killer: he pretends to be a wolf, and kills his old business partner and then some other people that were suspicious of the killer wolf story.
Pendergast does one of his Chongg Ran mind crossings to determine what happened. Four miners, crazed from mercury poisoning, became cannibals and killed The other miners. A group of seven miners became a posse and found the cannibals lair, in the abandoned Christmas Mine. The vigilantes were able to kill them, losing one of their own men in the battle.
While Pendergast ventures to the mine in his mind only, Corrie decides to go there for real, in the middle of a blizzard. She is followed by someone who tracks her through the mine, shooting at her. He manages to shoot off her little finger. She also hurts her ankle during the chase.
Pendergast crashes Monticello’s Christmas gathering, and recovers some paperwork for the designs of the Heights. They show the rocks and debris from the mining operations. Pendergast can use these papers to prove they knew about the mercury in the ground water beneath the Heights, and how the residents were poisoned just as a century before the miners were poisoned.
As Corrie emerges from the mine, she encounters Ted Roman. He chains her to a post in the old pumping station, and then sets the building ablaze. Pendergast, having discovered that Corrie visited his office and read some of his papers, heads up to the mine to find her.
When he arrives, he finds the remains of a burnt body chained to a post. Believing it is Corrie’s body, he becomes enraged. He chases Ted into the mine. Ted manages to run out the other end and heads down the mountain. Pendergast shoots at his fleeing form, but misses. However, his shots and Ted’s running cause an avalanche, killing Ted.
We find out that Corrie survived the fire, and now a sniper, hired by Monticello and Kermode, has his sights on her. He shot at her earlier, to warn her off: he also killed her dog as another warning. As he’s about to fire, Captain Bowdree appears and disarms the man.
Epilogue. The body that was burned was Ms. Kermode—Ted had hated her, as she represented the rich, decadent lifestyle that he despised. He grew up in the area and was driven mad by the mercury poisoning. The evidence that Corrie was able to retrieve during her mad dash through the mines proved that the cannibal miners had indeed been poisoned by mercury: Pendergast is sure that she will win the John Jay prize back at school. He also has gotten Captain Bowdree an interview for the FBI.
