Centred on the lives of predators such as stoats and weasels, foxes, badgers and otters, bats and birds of prey, and is set in the south Cotswolds at the start of the 1950s, against a landscape as yet untouched by the ecological consequences of myxomatosis in the rabbit population. The main player is the stoat, the so-called "royal hunter" of the Glouchestershire Cotswolds, through whose activities the reader is taken on a natural history tour of "Longtree", making it possible to experience in intimate detail this elusive predator's interaction with its environment. Walker skilfully tempers the narrative's strong predatory element with frequent reference to local geology and landscape history, archaeology, rare butterfly populations, flora and folklore.