No-nonsense prosecutor Helen West is a rare combination of jaundiced pragmatism and well-guarded vulnerability. Her take-no-prisoners attitude is legendary - she has always put the harsh strictures of the law first, the human tragedies she cannot alter, second. Yet rape is a crime that haunts her - particularly the latest case now on her plate. Especially because the accused is the fellow police officer and best friend of her craggy, rumpled lover, Superintendent Geoffrey Bailey. As she freely admits, she doesn't even like the accused, D.S. Ryan, a volatile and compulsively unfaithful man who maintains a stubborn silence in the face of the rape charge. In a case with a victim as pure as the driven snow and all of the physical evidence pointing to the accused, both West and Bailey assume Ryan's guilt. But slowly, preoccupied though they are with their own bittersweet love and loyalties, Helen and Geoffrey begin to delve into this most traumatic of crimes. And as they do, there emerges a man of consummate, cold-blooded intuition about women and their insecurities, a man whose charm, chocolates, and flowers guarantee him a ready welcome - and rape, even murder, without a trace.