One day Lindy Simpson cycles home from school and straight into a trap: someone is lying in wait for her, a wire strung between lampposts across the path. She is raped just yards from her front door. No one sees a thing and the perpetrator is not caught.

Her fourteen-year-old neighbour has loved Lindy from afar since they were kids. He begins investigating neighbourhood 'suspects', determined to solve the crime. But before the long, hot summer is out, he will learn that the white picket fences of his hometown conceal a tangled web of darkness.