Obsession is a literary mystery tale, the story of an obsessive love affair, and the repercussions long after the affair has ended. The two people at the heart of the story are writers. The third person in the triangle is a celebrated poet of Dalmatian extraction. It recreates the era in an atmosphere charged with New Zealand's 1980s culture, set on an island where the dense bush forms a metaphor for the difficulties of a struggling writer striving to raise her head above the dominating reputation of her lover.