In Blackmuir Wood, above the Victorian Spa village of Strathpeffer, sixteen miles west of Inverness, in the Highlands of Scotland, four American students are found with their throats slit. Worse, each has been given a chilling new haircut. The FBI arrive, but too late to prevent another terrible murder, and into town strolls everybody's favourite accidental death-junkie barber, Barney Thomson, looking for a short back and sides and a different hair colour.