Bingham, his reputation as a searcher for missing people coming to the ears of the traveller community, is approached by the grandfather of a young woman to find her. She is believed to have disappeared with a boyfriend but the truth is not always as it seems and Bingham, not a man to jump readily to conclusions, pursues his usual policy: 'quick to listen, slow to judge'.
First, he must infiltrate and then survive in a community that is often hostile and always silent towards outsiders. Two of his several talents gain him an early, if guarded, acceptance and his search takes him across Britain from traveller site to traveller site and to the annual Appleby Horse Fair.
Along the way he meets travellers who treasure their traditions and those who have broken from them; he meets enmity and friendship, benevolence and malevolence.
Persistent as always, he pursues the truth to its bitter end, an end that involves confrontations with the young woman's mother and father in a struggle between unwritten laws and those who would cast them aside.
This is the fifth in the Bingham series of novels and the first in which we meet his eldest son's family for the first time, a family destined to play a significant part in the eleventh Bingham novel
Bingham's Cambridge Christmas
.