Culchet is everyone's idea of the idyllic Lake District village, with geese on its tree-shaded green and friendly, well-behaved residents going quietly about their business. Bart Milburn is doing up the Old Hall, the chef at the pub is preparing for an anniversary party, her friend Alice is reviewing a crime thriller, its violence the very antithesis of Culchet as it dozes through an early heatwave. Then, without warning, that peace is shattered. Two deaths occur within a short space of time, both too sudden and unusual to be deemed accidents. And then five-year-old Kim Butler disappears. In this sleepy village, volcanic passions are waiting to erupt: driven by a lust for power, for possessions, and for merciless and fatal love.