It's New Year's Eve and Professor Duncan Price, an internationally-renowned physicist with a reputation for his work on time theory and quantum mechanics, is found dead in his study. While there are no obvious signs of why he died, on his desk is a sleek, black sphere, no larger than a cricket ball or baseball. A glowing red pinprick of light pulses from it at regular intervals. Added to this, the victim's brother, Noah, has gone missing. All of which convinces Detective Inspector Kelly Ross that things are not quite as they seem, particularly since the professor's widow appears to be less distraught than Kelly and her sergeant, Jordan Sparrow, would have expected.