Young private detectives, Banyard and Mingle, are out of money and out of luck when a swindled widow presents a life-changing case. As clues reveal a treacherous shipwreck and a rotting corpse in a cage, they are confronted by brutal smugglers and ghoulish gawpers in a mystery that could cost them their lives! However, in a dystopian world of slavery and greed, where silkers rule and threaders serve, it is not just the criminals they will have to fight… Can justice prevail when the law itself is corrupt? And how might a sock full of bones help bring it about?