When Ros Newman's car is found abandoned at her local West Country railway station, the police are not unduly concerned. They believe Ros has merely escaped the pressures of a glamorous but demanding job at the fashion firm Vandina, and the stress of coping with an obsessively jealous ex-husband.
But the current man in Ros's life, Mike Thompson, suspects there is a more sinister explanation, and so does her sister Maggie. She flies home from Corfu, leaving troubles of her own behind, to help Mike in his desperate search.
Mike and Maggie's investigations uncover a story of passion and ambition spanning thirty years, and a web of deception and desire which takes them from Corfu to a North Sea oil rig, and from Vermont, New England to South America. They soon realise, to their horror, it is not only Ros's life which is in danger. . .