The setting is a cliffside manor on the English coast in the early years of the Second World War. The narrator is Dr. Edward Haggard, a mysteriously wounded figure racked by morphine addiction and tormented by the memories of his intense affair with Fanny, the wife of his former chief pathologist. Fanny is dead, but when her son, a young fighter pilot, appears in Dr. Haggard's life, the aging doctor finds out how an old passion can turn into a strange--and dangerous--obsession. With consummate artistry and profound understanding of the frontiers of human experience, Patrick McGrath proves himself an unsurpassed craftsman of literary suspense.