DI Ben Kitto needs a second chance. After ten years working for the murder squad in London, a traumatic event has left him grief-stricken. He’s tried to resign from his job, but his boss has persuaded him to take three months to reconsider.
Ben plans to work in his uncle Ray’s boatyard, on the tiny Scilly island of Bryher where he was born, hoping to mend his shattered nerves. His plans go awry when the body of sixteen year old Laura Trescothick is found on the beach at Hell Bay. Her attacker must still be on the island because no ferries have sailed during a two-day storm. 
Everyone on the island is under suspicion. Dark secrets are about to resurface. And the murderer could strike again at any time.
'I love reading Kate's books in the way I love reading Sophie Hannah – a poet writing crime fiction is a great thing. Kate really shows us round the community and the landscape so that we feel we know it all. It is at once a locked-room mystery, a story of the returning hero, and an examination of fear and abuse. It has the air of a twenty-first century Agatha Christie' Julia Crouch