'Police are searching today for a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl who disappeared a week ago from her home in the totterdown area of Bristol.' Actress Kate Creech hears the new with alarm - her niece, Maisie, is fifteen and lives in Totterdown ...When another girl's corpse is found in a local part the Bristol police suspect Maisie's dad, an odd character who gathers young people to him like a magnet. Even though Bristol is out of his jurisdiction, Detective Inspector John Bright can't stay away - Kate is there, rehearsing As You Like It, and he adores Maisie as though she were his own. Bright, off his own patach, resorts to his own unofficial methods of investigation, methods which unearth some uncomfortable facts and lead him to a sinister young man who is keeping a diary ...