Bridie Chance has been brought up in luxury, but her world is shattered when she is told that for thirty years her much loved father has been a highly-successful criminal - and is now dead. With no home, no friends, and almost no money, Bridie finds herself responsible for a helpless mother, a younger sister and an elderly nanny - a crushing burden for a girl of twenty at the turn of the century. Then come the new friends and the enemies, and how can she know which is which amid the mysterious events which gradually close in about her? There is Alfie Perkin, the music hall comic from her mother's past, Nathan McFee, the man from Wyoming; Philippe Chatillon, the French detective; and Victor Sarrazin... Bridie holds a secret she does not know she possesses, a secret that both friends and enemies are anxious to discover. As she struggles, in an astonishing way, to support herself and her family, Bridie meets with failure and success, finds love and heartbreak and danger - until at last the masks are cast aside and the true faces are revealed to her in a nightmare ordeal under the shadow of the Capricorn Stone. Madeleine Brent was the pseudonym used by Peter O'Donnell, who also created the legendary thriller heroine Modesty Blaise. Madeleine Brent's real identity was one of publishing's best kept secrets.