When French expatriate aesthete Tristan Mourault, heir to a world renowned collection of Impressionist paintings, catches sight of 15 year old Karen Miller, he begins a calculated campaign of enchantment and seduction. He 'rescues' her from her working class life, transforms her into his ideal embodiment of beauty and taste and then stages her death to mask his true crime. Set against a byzantine backdrop of greed, artifice and manipulation with tantalising echoes of Lolita, this stunning debut keeps its darkest secrets right up until the very last page.