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Superintendent Gil Mayo is a policeman, and even in his quiet, country town, he is no stranger to tragedy. But up until now, there had always been some distance between the official investigator and those who had been personally stricken. It was someone else's tragedy. Now it is his. His daughter, Julie, and her friend, Kathryn, are missing, and the blow that falls is the discovery of Kat's body in a small hotel (once a luxurious country house) and Julie's disappearance. This is as personal as things can get. So it is not surprising that Mayo is taken off the case and the responsibility given to his assistant, Inspector Abigail Moon.
Moon searches for roots of the crime in the background of the two girls. The most horrifying question that Abigail is faced with is whether Kat was indeed the intended victim or whether the murder victim "should" have been Julie - the Superintendent's daughter.
As Abigail looks further, that question still unanswered, she discovers that Kat had led a complex and colorful love life - a life that involved some of the area's most important citizens with apparently stainless reputations.
This knowledge means that Julie is in even more danger than Abigail and Mayo had feared, and the race to find her and remove the threat hanging over her has her father mad with frustration and Abigail determined to clear the harrowing case up and save her chief (and good friend's) young daughter.
