Two apparently harmless women reside in cottages one building apart in
the idyllic English village of Little Camborne. Miss Finch and Miss
Swallow, cousins, have put their pasts behind them and settled into
conventional country life. But when a mysterious foreigner, Theodore
Cadmus - from Caldera, a Mediterranean island nobody has heard of -
moves into the middle cottage, the safe monotony of their lives is
shattered.
The fates of the two cousins and Mr Cadmus, and those of Little Camborne
and Caldera, become inextricably enmeshed. Long-hidden secrets and
long-held grudges threaten to surface, drawing all into a vortex of
subterfuge, theft, violence, mayhem . . . and murder.