After escaping death at the hands of a ruthless murderer while honeymooning in Constantinople (Tears of Pearl), Lady Emily Hargreaves reluctantly agrees to recovers from her wounds at her mother-in-law’s estate in Normandy.

The novel opens as Lady Emily, out for a ride, suddenly comes across the body of a young woman who has been horribly murdered. Her wounds are reminiscent of those inflicted on the victims of Jack the Ripper, who is wreaking havoc across the channel in London. Has he made his way to France?

Lady Emily and Colin learn that the victim is the daughter of a high born family of French aristocrats who had been committed to an asylum for the insane. While there, she had given birth to an illegitimate child who was spirited away, and may even be dead.

As Lady Emily pursues a trail of clues to the beautiful medieval city of Rouen and a crumbling chateau in the country, she is increasingly disturbed to hear the cries of a little girl in distress who may or may not be the ghost of a murdered child. But then who is leaving blue ribbons in her wake? What is the nature of the bizarrely intense relationship between them murdered woman and her unstable brother?

When the doctor who had treated her in the asylum is found brutally murdered and the body of the child’s father is found hidden behind a wall in a cottage by the sea, Colin is determined to send Emily back to England before the killer strikes again.

But it’s too late. Emily is on the verge of solving the mystery, when she is taken captive by the madman in an isolated tower where she hears what sound like the eerie cries of a lost child. She begins to distrust her own sanity but must keep her head in a terrifying game of wits against a cold and brilliant killer or she will be his next victim.