Another classic mystery from the “master of the clever twist.” On a summer’s day in 1981; a two-year-old girl; Tamsin Hall; was abducted during a picnic at the famous prehistoric site of Avebury in Wiltshire. Her seven-year-old sister Miranda was knocked down and killed by the abductor’s van. The girls were in the care of their nanny; Sally Wilkinson. One of the witnesses to this tragic event was David Umber; a Ph.D student who was waiting at the village pub to keep an appointment with a man called Griffith who claimed he could help Umber with his researches into the letters of “Junius;” the pseudonymous eighteenth century polemicist who was his Ph.D subject. But Griffin failed to show up; and Umber never heard from him again. The two-year-old; Tamsin Hall; was never seen again either. The Hall family fell apart under the strain. Sally Wilkinson; the nanny; wound up living with Umber; whom she had met at the inquiry. But she never recovered from the incident; suffered increasingly from depression; and eventually committed suicide. In the spring of 2004; retired Chief Inspector George Sharp receives a letter signed “Junius” reproaching him for botching the 1981 investigation. Sharp confronts Umber; whose explanation for being at the scene of the tragedy has always seemed dubious. Obliged to accept Umber’s denial of authorship of the letter; he nonetheless forces him to join in a search for the real culprit — and hence the long-concealed truth about what happened 23 years previously. It is a quest that both will later regret having embarked upon. Too late they come to understand that some mysteries are better left unsolved.