''There are touches of the 87th Precinct, Maigret and Janwillem de Wetering, but Baantjer is in a category all his own.'' -The Globe and Mail.... In Inspector DeKok's line of work, death is commonplace. But encountering figures from the dead certainly is not. At the request of the Belgium police, Inspectors DeKok and Vledder attend the funeral of a murder victim. The body was fished out of Antwerp's Scheldt River, but brought back to Amsterdam to be laid to rest in Sorrow Field Cemetery. During the service DeKok spies the face of a man long known to be dead. Whispers of the gray sleuth's sanity are uttered but DeKok is certain of a darker more sinister activity at play than just the ridiculous notion of ghosts. Further bodies are discovered, apparently they too were poisoned and dumped in the river. DeKok is forced to venture from his beloved city and travel to Bloedberg (''Blood Mountain''), a notorious neighborhood in Antwerp. It seems a certain Heaven's Gate Temple and the Holy Pact for the Dying hold the answers to both the living dead and the dead and buried.