With Christmas fast approaching, amateur sleuth Juno Browne helps organisea Christmas Fair to raise funds for a local animal sanctuary. The event is asuccess, but whilst Santa is handing out presents in the fairy-lit grotto, amurder is being committed in a dark corner of the garden. Juno discovers thebody of Bob the Blacksmith, found clutching a horseshoe decorated with a sprigof elder. Suspicion falls on Bob's long-suffering wife, Jackie, and on DonDrummond, with whom Bob violently quarrelled in the past.From this cloud of suspicion, Juno begins to make connections between Bob'smurder and previous 'accidental' deaths, but her course is obstructed by thosewho insist on links to ancient folklore. Determined to take the evidence with agenerous pinch of salt, Juno navigates pagan ceremonies and astrologicalconnections that turn up yet more bodies and a deadly path to the truth.