As Philippa Barnes, a young West Coast glacier guide, is getting over her parents' deatg in a climbing accident, Kirsten, a journalist friend of hers, is murdered beside a nearby lake. Philippa teams up with Kirsten's brother Jack to try and find out what Kirsten was investigating while a diarist tries to understand the emotion behind a betrayal that has poisoned at least one life. Philippa's search will take her from the secretive people of the lake to the home of high court judge, Loraine Latimer, a powweful woman who has a strange relationshipwith her family. Philippa finds that the murder of Kirsten is linked to a decades-old mystery, but not in time to prevent another tragedy. Past and present finally come together in a late night confrontationat Lake Kaniere when two very different people face the consequences of choices they made decades before
