Crispin Guest awakens in a strange bed after a night of passion and finds a woman dead, murdered. Drunk, Crispin scarcely remembers the night before. Did he kill her? But when other young women turn up dead under similar circumstances, he knows there is a deadly stalker loose in London. Could it have to do with the mysterious Tears of the Virgin Mary kept under lock and key by a close-lipped widow, a relic that a rival family would kill to get their hands on? With Crispin shackled and imprisoned by the immutable sheriffs, his apprentice Jack Tucker takes over the job of his master as the "Tracker" and joins forces with a fresh young lawyer to solve the crime before Crispin hangs for murder.