Sticks and stones may break your bones… but your name is going to kill you… When the body of a missing teenager is discovered at Neist Point close to the famous lighthouse, battered and bruised, D.I. Duncan McAdam and his small team must determine how he died. The Skye Ball, an annual event steeped in tradition where the next generation of the great and the good meet to celebrate their coming of age and present themselves to one another, has always been something of a spectacle for the islanders. The two-day affair culminates in a glitzy dinner followed by a night of Scottish Country Dancing where the young female attendees have a strict plan of who they will be introduced to, who they will dance with and to which song. The band plays almost until dawn when the gathered teenagers throw caution to the wind and leap together into Portree Harbour, a fitting end to mark their journey from adolescence into adulthood. This year, a dozen teenagers go into the water... only one fails to resurface. The rescue teams scour the bay in vain, searching for the missing boy; the last surviving heir to a Highland land baron dying from a terminal illness. With those who have vested interests in both the boy's survival - and indeed his untimely death - circling the scene, laying down markers of their own, how will Duncan determine whether the disappearance is a tragic accident or something much more sinister?