Kirsty Thornhill disappeared three years ago. Is she dead, or just determined to keep her head down? Journalist Mike Stanhope turns detective and scours West Yorkshire and the English North West in search of answers, but it’s no easy ride; the trail is cold and the clues are ambiguous.

Kirsty, Mike learns, was a woman of contradictions – firm in her views and quick to anger, yet also warm and oddly reticent. He wants her to be alive, but new evidence keeps pointing the other way. Meanwhile, his girlfriend Sam is worried that his conscientiousness could be sliding into obsession.

Mike's breathless trail lurches across the UK as he pieces together Kirsty’s complex story, and in a contemporary twist, he starts to suspect that the ripples around her disappearance could spread much further than anyone imagined.