DI Joanna Piercy breaks into the house of missing nurse Marilyn Smith. She finds Marilyn upstairs, spreadeagled across the bed, provacatively dressed and elaborately made up—she is also stone dead.

Despite a lack of evidence at the post mortem, DI Pierce is convinced that Marilyn was murdered. As a newcomer and a woman in the remote moorland town, Piercy must battle against long-held prejudices in her determination to find the killer. But could she be wrong? Is it possible that Marilyn Smith's death was not murder after all...?