Making a home, however, in the ravishing, haunted landscape of Italy's Riviera coast turns our to be lonelier than Rose had anticipated. And it is only when she is asked to write a profile on one of her reclusive neighbours, the once-glamorous film star Elvira Vitale, that Rose feels her new life is really beginning.
But when a young girl's body is found on the local beach, and the following day Elvira's hard-working cleaner, Ania, goes missing, Rose finds herself embroiled in a murder investigation that threatens the idyll she has worked so hard to establish.