Returning to L'Escala, the idyllic Spanish village where they were once so happy, Oz Blackstone and Primavera Phillips are looking to forget the past, but old ghosts are not so easy to placate, and the shade of Oz's childhood sweetheart Jan, now tragically dead, is threatening to turn their relationship into a seething cauldron of bitterness and recrimination. Until a body turns up face down in the swimming pool of their new villa, and suddenly they are very much back in harness again. Faced with the indifference of the local police, Oz and Prim are forced to investigate the murder themselves, and soon they begin to uncover a nest of very dangerous vipers beneath L'Escala's sunny exterior.