In the wake of a failed marriage and a misguided love affair, feisty academic Terry Williams moves to Oxford to resume her abandoned doctorate in detective fiction. But her new home, a terraced house on quiet Osney Island, was previously the scene of a savage sexual murder, and Terry soon finds the past returning to invade the present with horrific consequences.

A traumatized stray cat which eats its own babies, a famous neighbour involved in a hushed-up sexual scandal, and the discovery of a series of pornographic letters all serve to involve Terry in a mystery more brutal and more elusive than any tackled by the fictional detectives she studies.