A girl is found, presumably a suicide, though police say it's more likely she was the victim of foul play. But police in the small English seaside town of Torquay are having trouble figuring out who the beautiful 18-year-old is. The suicide note is signed Laura, but her identical twin -- who found the body -- says she's Laura.

That's when well-known mystery writer Emma Winter hires literature professor Lily Pascale -- the subject of two previous novels by Thomas -- to find out which one's dead and why. Emma won't tell Lily why she's so interested in the case, though readers are bound to guess the reason almost immediately, something it takes Lily half the book to do.

What makes the case hard for Lily is that the surviving twin passes herself off as both the presumably dead Laura and as the supposedly alive Alex.

And those who know the girls have firm, well-supported but conflicting opinions as to which one's dead. Even the descriptions of the two girls are vastly different: Some say Alex is evil, driven by jealousy of her more talented sister. Others say Laura is the manipulative one, using her powerful sexuality to play everyone for fools.

Then, a local rocker who has been sleeping with both sisters is found dead. Lily knows the deaths are linked, but not how. And are they connected to the recent deaths of the twins' parents in a car accident?

There's a lot going on and Thomas keeps readers wondering which sister is alive, and whether she is evil or just a kid who's trying to cope with a lot of tragedy. Then Thomas throws a few scares in just for fun: How can one not get the creeps when the lights of Lily's lonely house set atop a cliff go out frequently in winter?

Lily, 26, unhappy in her job as a lecturer, embarking on a relationship with a mysterious American screenwriter and really not a very savvy detective, is billed as "intelligent, endearing, eccentric," but she comes across mostly as lost, impetuous and too mercurial for her own good. Some might find that charming. It isn't.

Lily's moodiness makes the love story between her and the screenwriter hard to swallow. They each seem to take a lot of abuse from the other without much thought. And Lily goes on pointless rants, making a reader wonder if it's Lily or Thomas who wants to make pronouncements from on high. The two are at their best when they stick to murder.

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