Twenty years ago a child vanished without trace from a wild stretch of shoreline in East Anglia. His body was never found and his parents have searched for him ever since. Now on a quiet street in Cambridge the mother discovers a young man whom she hopes against hope is her missing son. But the joy of reunion is laced with dread. Is this beautiful youth an interloper or is he really the lost child? And if he is the boy who disappeared from the beach, where has he been all these years? What, most of all is his connection with the violence that begins with his arrival and ends, almost inevitably, with murder? The parents of the disappeared child ask Laura Principal to investigate and try to find answers to these questions. She finds her own world turned upside down in this chilling story of identity, devotion - and death.