Shelley Summers is sixteen when she is subjected to a serious sexual assault in a London underpass, the repurcussions of which are to have a lasting effect.
Ten years later, she is working as a journalist for a nationwide magazine when she meets a senior detective who is investigating a series of murders, committed, he believes, by the same person.
The deeper Mike Eveson's investigations go, the more he is forced to a troublesome conclusion, that the woman who is responsible for the murders is the very same one he has fallen for: Shelley Summers.
But is he right?
