Selina March lives a remote life, cut off even frm her neighbours in a remote Scottish hamlet. But when she accepts a paying guest, a crime writer visiting a nearby asylum for the criminally insane where she hopes to meet up with child murderer Mary Maskelyne, old memories and old shames are stirred up. And the secret she has hidden for decades - the connection between her and Maskelybe - threatens to come to the surface. "Sarah Rayne" hides the pseudonym of a "well-known British author". Anyone knowing Anne Perry's history may well add 2 + 2 and get the right answer wouldn't you think?