Thea Osborne, accompanied by her beloved spaniel Hepzie, has had her fair share of unfortunate occurrences while house-sitting, and her new assignment for the mysterious Yvonne Parker is no exception. The isolated and somewhat unsettling village of Snowshill has Thea on edge as soon as she arrives, and Hyacinth House - her new, rather cluttered home - does nothing to dispel such feelings. Soon enough, her intuition in this case proves to be right, and once again Thea becomes entangled in another mystery. Stevie Horsfall, a mischievous child from the village, is found strangled outside Hyacinth House, with his eccentric mother Gudrun as the prime suspect. Believing in Gudrun's innocence, Thea, alongside her friend Drew Slocombe and Sonia Gladwin, works to uncover a sinister plot, where seemingly separate lives are intertwined with secretive and strange relationships. This malicious web of suspects leads Thea through the lives of the villagers and their secrets, to London and beyond.