' If you were to ask me to tell you about my wife I would have to warn you at the outset that I don't know a great deal about her. Or at least not as much as I thought I did...' Alex is in his thirties a solitary man who has finally found love in the form of his beautiful & vivacious wife Rachel. When Rachel is brutally murdered one Midsummer Night by the lake in the grounds of their alma mater Worcester College Oxford Alex's life as he knew it vanishes. He returns to Oxford that winter & through the shroud of his shock & grief begins to try to piece together the mystery surrounding his wife's death. Playing host to Alex's winter visit is Harry Rachel's former tutor & trusted mentor who turns out to have been involved in some way in almost every significant development of their relationship throughout their undergraduate years. In his exploration of Rachel's history Alex also turns to Evie Rachel's self-centred & difficult godmother whose jealousy of her charge has waxed & waned over the years. & then there are her university friends Anthony & Cissy who shared with Rachel her love of Browning & a taste for the illicit. As Alex delves deep into the past to uncover shocking secrets & constantly shifting versions of the truth it is with these virtual strangers as his guides that he begins to confront the terrifying reality that neither his life nor his love are the things he thought them to be.