Years after they'd committed their crimes and served their sentences, rapists are turning up dead in hotel rooms. Some people might believe the killings have a positive effect on re-offending rates, but Detective Inspector Thorne knows he has to track down the murderer. Someone - a woman or somebody pretending to be a woman - is writing to convicted rapists in prison, befriending them and then brutally killing them when they are released. DI Tom Thorne must discover the link between these killings and a murder/suicide that took place twenty-five years before ; a tragedy to which the only witnesses were two small children, now adults and nowhere to be found& How can you escape a past that will do a lot more than just catch up with you? And how can Thorne catch a killer, when he doesn't really care about the victims?