'Her plane crashed in the Cevennes this afternoon. Didn't you know? She was piloting the plane herself.'

Ten-year-old heiress Pamela Deansworthy is raised by her paternal aunt Adela after the death of her father. Through her adolescence Pamela is prevented from seeing her adored mother Betty, who had left Richard Deansworthy and moved to Switzerland with writer Harry Lind. By the time Pamela comes of age, her tangled relationships with the stern but loving Adela, flighty, weak Betty and, most of all, suave and manipulative Harry, fuels a crisis that results in tragedy. Pamela must then unravel the mystery surrounding more than one death, and the motivations of each player in the drama, including herself. A story of psychological suspense and coldly calculated retribution.

Mary Fitt was the pseudonym of Kathleen Freeman (1897–1959), a classical scholar who taught Greek at the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire in Cardiff. Beginning in 1937, Freeman wrote twenty-nine mysteries and a number of short stories as Mary Fitt, and was elected to the Detection Club in 1950. Aside from her detective novels, Freeman published many books on classical Greece, scholarly articles and children's stories. She lived in St Mellons in Wales with her partner Dr Liliane Marie Catherine Clopet, a family physician and author.