The Burke and Hare anatomy murders of 1828 terrify Edinburgh, until Burke is hanged and Hare disappears. Over a decade later, in the early days of New Zealand colonial settlement, a whaler washes up on the eastern shores of Port Nicholson. He calls himself Ōkiwi Brown, sets up a pub with an evil reputation and takes in a woman abandoned on his beach. Nearby, children sing dark nursery rhymes of murder.
One afternoon, Õkiwi is visited by a pair of ex-soldiers, a bosun looking for a fight, and itinerant worker William Leckie with his young daughter, Mary. When a body is discovered on the beach, it could be that a drunken man has drowned. But perhaps the gathered witnesses know something more.