New Year’s Day, 2000. Hunters on their way home through a forest in the Jura stumble upon a half-circle of dead bodies lying in the freshly fallen snow. A nearby holiday chalet contains the debris of a seemingly ordinary Christmas: champagne, decorations, presents for the dead children. The hunters are questioned and sent away. As they descend the mountain, a large dark car rises past them in the gloom. The woman within, Dominique Carpentier, is in charge of the investigation. She has encountered this suicide sect before. In the chalet she finds a strange leather-bound book containing maps of the stars. The Book of the Faith leads her to the Composer, Friedrich Grosz, who is connected to every one of the dead. Surely he must be implicated in the Faith? And so the pursuit begins.

Hurtling breathlessly through the vineyards of southern France to the gabled houses of Lubeck, through cathedrals, opera houses, museums and the cobbled streets of an Alpine village, this ferocious new novel from the acclaimed author of Hallucinating Foucault is a metaphysical mystery of astonishing verve and power.