Who has committed the greatest scientific hoax in history?
What secrets lie behind this sinister fraud?
Who is prepared to kill to keep them hidden?

Piltdown Man: fossil bones unearthed in southern England appear to be the remains of the earliest Englishman, the missing link between apes and man. In London, the British Museum is planning what may be the biggest announcement in its history.

But now one of the few men who has held the fossils in his hands has disappeared. The Museum dispatches an odd pair of investigators to find him: Stephen McKay, a young Museum worker, drawn into the affair against his better judgement, and Augustus Parker, an enigmatic former Scotland Yard detective with a reputation for unorthodox methods. Parker examines the fossils and immediately declares they are fakes. As McKay and Parker track the missing man in London and the English countryside, struggling to pierce the fog surrounding the Piltdown fraud, they stumble upon a horrendous double murder. They are attacked, their lives threatened. A mysterious woman dogs their steps.

How do a local amateur archaeologist, a reclusive landowner, a British Museum director, a famous author, and a bone collector figure in the deepening mystery? Which them has perpetrated the fraud? Which one has killed to keep his dark secret hidden? Between fakery and murder what is ... the link?