If an eight-year-old boy commits murder is he irredeemably evil? Can he ever be rehabilitated or will he kill again to preserve his secret? Hampshire farmer, Tom O'Malley, finds the dead body of a young journalist. Not satisfied that she is a suicide he makes his own investigation. Fed rumours about his friend and employer, Hollywood film director Gustav Fjortoft, he angrily rejects them. Yet all his inquiries into his friend's past seem to substantiate the rumours. Following suspicious deaths in his own com- munity, Tom's quest leads him the American West Coast, where he escapes abduction and near death. Returning to England he finds the answers he seeks in a dramatic finale in his home village.