Lucy Trent is perfectly used to having the legend of her glamorous, disreputable grandmamma disinterred from time to time - the infamous silent-screen star, Lucretia von Wolff, whose lovers were legion, whose scandals were numerous, and whose life ended abruptly in a bizarre double murder and suicide at the Ashwood film studios in 1952. She rather enjoys Lucretia's legend, although most of the family would prefer it to be quietly forgotten.

But when an inquisitive schoolteacher, Trixie Smith, is found murdered in the now-derelict studios, disturbing facts about the past begin to emerge - facts which seem to point back to the eerie legend of the child known simply as Alraune - the child alleged to have been born at the outbreak of WWII. Alraune, named for Lucretia's most famous film, has always seemed nothing more than a ghost-child, a semi-fable created by various publicity machines. But did Alraune actually exist? And if so, why was it a childhood "so bizarre and so utterly tragic it's best not repeated," as Lucy's beloved Aunt Deborah insists.

In the ensuing murder investigation, Lucy is to discover the truth of her family's dark and often poignant history - a history which spans the glittering concert halls of 1920s Vienna to the bleak environs of wartime Auschwitz.

And at the heart of it all lies the shocking truth about the mysterious child called Alraune.