Commissaire Adamsberg leaves Paris for a three-day conference in London. With him are a young sergeant, Estalere, and Commandant Danglard. It is the break they all need, until a macabre and brutal case comes to the attention of their colleague Radstock from New Scotland Yard. Just outside the baroque and romantic old Highgate cemetery a pile of shoes is found. Not so strange in itself, but the shoes contain severed feet. Adamsberg and Danglard are drawn into a trail of vampires and vampire-hunters that leads them all the way to Serbia, a place where the old certainties no longer apply.