By all appearances, Martians are responsible for the hanging death of Rouge Valley landowner Henri Gaston, a Martian-obsessed loner with a shop full of telescopes, charts and journals.

Murdoch finds himself drawn to the widowed mother of a boy who has gone missing, but the case starts to take a strange turn involving spies, midgets and a robotic super weapon.

Murdoch and Crabtree enjoy a war re-enactment, until a fellow pretend soldier is murdered.