When Tim Harding agrees to do a favour for a friend by bidding on his behalf for an antique ring at auction, little does he know of the secrets that tie the ring to three tragedies: the sinking of HMS Association off Scilly in 1707, a murder in Penzance thirty years later and the drowning of a journalist diving at the Association wreck site in 1999.

But the ring is stolen before it can be sold, and a shocking murder follows. Harding is quickly drawn into a web of conspiracies surrounding the ring’s origins and finds, close to the heart of the mystery, a young woman he is certain he recognizes, even though they have never met. As he goes in search of her identity, his life begins to fall apart. Somewhere, a perilous truth awaits him, coupled with a terrible realization: those who uncover that truth are not allowed to live…

It was more out of idle curiosity than anything else that I went along some years ago to a viewing day at a house in Penzance,  the entire contents of which were shortly to be auctioned. But curiosity is never really idle for a writer. I realized at once, wandering from one room to another crammed with the accumulated hoardings and keepsakes of the couple who had lived there, that there was a story just waiting to be written based on the idea that somewhere, hidden among so much that was apparently worthless, there might be a single item of rare and secret significance.

This thought later heightened my interest in the legends and mysteries surrounding the sinking of HMS Association, with the loss of all hands, off the Isles of Scilly in October 1707. The incident is historically significant because it prompted the Government to offer a reward for a solution to the longitude problem, eventually and famously won by John Harrison, to the huge benefit of all mariners. What I wanted to explore were the persistent rumours that islanders looted the corpses of some of those aboard when they were washed ashore at Porth Hellick on St Mary’s, notably that of Admiral Sir Clowdisley Shovell himself, whose flagship the Association was. In Shovell’s case, an emerald-and-diamond ring was supposed to have been taken – and the finger he wore it on cut off in the process!

If you go on holiday to the Isles of Scilly today, it may be hard to imagine such brutality amidst all the sun, sea and sand. But life there was very different three hundred years ago. There is another side to the islands, not immediately apparent to the casual visitor. Archaeologists have discovered so many prehistoric burial sites that it seems certain many of the dead were transported there from the mainland. The islands must have had a special spiritual significance, as, for some people, they still do. This was something I also wanted to explore and so the story of a lost ring and a house sale expanded in ways I could not have anticipated, linking medieval legend to twenty-first century fraud.

One of the recurring themes of the book is of people searching for things, only to find something else instead, which they would have been better off never knowing about.  The title of the book is a reflection of this. The central character, Tim Harding, only goes to Penzance in the first place as a favour to a friend. There he sees a young woman he senses he recognizes, even though, apparently, they have never met before. He could dismiss the sensation, but instead seeks an explanation for it. He attempts to put a name to her familiar face and in so doing steps unwittingly into the heart of a centuries-old conspiracy.