Next in the series of stories about the Vampire Judge Dee and his human assistant, Jonathan, this one starts with Judge Dee being judged by a monastery of vampires with arrears over an item he had earlier borrowed, before getting into the murders, which may be over the contents of a book rumoured to be about the dead.

Compared to previous stories, there is not much detective work in this one, which has an obvious suspect and a 'MacGuffin' vampire, who just happens to know how to deal with the protections surrounding the rumoured book. In the end, the story is more about the author's world of vampires than a real mystery.