After spending some years abroad, Gerard Roylake returns to England to take up his inheritance at Trimley Deen. As he assumes his complicated new life amongst strangers, his encounter with Cristel Toller, the miller’s daughter, recalls happier childhood memories and brings him into contact with a strangely beautiful man known only as the Lodger.

Deaf and embittered by his isolation from the world, the Lodger, besotted with Cristel, exerts a powerful sway over those with whom he comes into contact. His envy of Gerard, his rival for Cristel’s affections, leads him to plot his removal, but will his malign scheming keep the lovers apart?

Written two years before the author’s death, The Guilty River touches on questions of social status and the darker side of human nature, while the plot exhibits Collins’s trademark twists and turns.