When a nameless girl is brought in, drowned, to the mortuary where Stewart Park works as a photographer, he becomes obsessed with her frozen beauty. Stewarts domestic life is more than a little unsettling: Dad, whos given to consuming but short-lived crazes, has recently installed Lucy the pit-bull terrier as part of his home-security campaign, and Stewarts small nephews, Lee and Lenny, are constantly dumped on him by his evasive sister Mary. Lee and Lenny are behaving in an inexplicably withdrawn fashion, Mary appears to be keeping dubious company, and Stewart cant help worrying that destructive Dad will one day break into his bedroom and take apart his precious computer. Small wonder, then, that Stewart devotes himself to finding out all he can about the drowned girl. His enquiries – and their consequences – begin to take over his life. Advancing into a dark and vicious world hes never even dreamt of, he realises, belatedly, that hes a hopelessly ill-equipped player in a very sinister game…