AustLit

'Jennifer’s husband, Adrian, is dead, his totally unexpected legacy an eight-year-old child by the mistress Jennifer knows nothing of until she sees the woman lying dead on a French mortuary slab alongside Adrian’s body.'

'Deeply shocked and bewildered, Jennifer returns to England with the profoundly distressed child, Nicole. She is determined that Adrian’s parents should be made to accept responsibility for raising Nicole.'

'With all of this on her mind, Jennifer would scarcely have been aware of the horrific murder of a young prostitute, Baby Roach, by the man known as the Butcher Bird. Except for the fact that Jennifer knows the killer. The Butcher Bird belongs in her own secret past.'

'Jennifer’s life becomes a terrifying, never-ending nightmare when Nicole is abducted and she finds herself being stalked relentlessly by both the hard-nosed detective responsible for nailing the Butcher Bird for a series of earlier sex crimes, and Baby Roach’s vicious gay lover, Big Jan, who is determined to prevent Jennifer from interfering with her obsessive plan to kill the Butcher Bird for what he did to Baby.'

'Fleeing for her life, and with no one to turn to for help, Jennifer frantically pursues Nicole’s abductors before the child disappears forever into the dark, secret world which Jennifer and the Butcher Bird shared briefly as children, only to find herself betrayed, at the very last moment, by the one person she would never have thought she would ever have reason to mistrust.'

Source : publisher's blurb