Rose Fell's friends think she's taking a big risk when she leaves England to move to a beautiful, isolated village near Genoa. But Rose no longer has any ties back home, and relishes the challenges of a new start. Making a home, however, in the ravishing, haunted landscape of Italy's riviera coast, turns out to be lonely - and it is only when she is asked to write a profile of one of her reclusive neighbours, the once-glamorous film star Elvira Vitale, that Rose feels her new life may be beginning. But when a young girl's body is found on the local beach, and the following day Elvira's cleaner, Ania, goes missing, Rose finds herself embroiled in a murder investigation which shatters the peace of her seaside idyll.