Meet Mr Cadmus. He’s charming, mysterious and owns a pet parrot; where he goes, the shadow of death follows. What more could you want in a neighbour?

The apparently harmless Miss Finch and Miss Swallow live one house apart in the idyllic English village of Little Camborne. But when a mysterious foreigner, Theodore Cadmus - from Caldera, a Mediterranean island nobody has heard of - moves in between them, the safe monotony of their lives is shattered.

The fates of the two cousins and Mr Cadmus, and those of Little Camborne and Caldera, become inextricably enmeshed. Long-hidden secrets and long-held grudges threaten to surface, drawing all into a vortex of subterfuge, theft, violence, mayhem … and murder.