A multiple murderer is at work in the Cornish fishing village of St. Steele in this sophisticated debut by a Daily Telegraph journalist. It is 1956, and the victims are young women. The killer acts as though unassailable. Such crimes inevitably attract the country's media who flock to the village. Once there, most of the journalists stay at the Hotel Eden, managed by Delores Broadbent and her 15-year-old daughter, Betty. Delores displays signs of bipolar disorder; her bouts of depression force the teenager to care for her mother and manage the hotel. The naive Betty becomes fascinated by Gallagher, one of the journalists, who has a mysterious allure as he is obviously cut from a very different cloth than his rough-and-ready colleagues. Despite Betty's age, her friendship with Gallagher deepens as the deaths in St. Steele continue. Their feelings and actions entangle the two in the killings, and they make personal choices that shape their own lives and that of an innocent man.
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