Twenty-eight-year-old virtuoso violinist Gideon Davies has lost not only his memory of music but also his ability to play the instrument he mastered as a five-year-old prodigy. All he can remember is a single name: Sonia.

Then, one rainy evening, Gideon's mother Eugenie travels to London for a mysterious appointment. But before she is able to reach her destination, a car swoops out of nowhere and kills her in the street.

In pursuing Eugenie's killer, Lynley and Havers come to know a group of people whose lives are inextricably connected by a long-ago death, a trial, and a prison sentence handed down as retribution for a crime no one has spoken of for twenty years.