In Victoria, 1869, a mutilated body is discovered in the forest: Dr McCrory, an American 'alienist' whose methods include phrenology, Mesmerism, and sexual-mystical 'magnetation'. 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--respectable or not--has something to hide.