Asa Darbey is a 21st century Frankenstein. Frances Dubrielli is a clone, the product of a botched renegade experiment carried out in the heady days following the birth of Dolly the Dorset Sheep.

Crippled, nearly blind in one eye and with only part of one kidney, Frances has been shunted off to obscurity at birth. She grows up miserable but brilliant, unaware of what she is – and fiercely determined to wring a scrap of normal happiness out of what promises to be a short life.

When her quest is beset by disaster and culminates in murder, Frances finds an unlikely ally in a jaded detective who is baffled by forensic evidence that seems to be impossible.