Leeds in the 1970s is a place fraught with danger for young women like Jude, for her best friend Nel and Janice across the road. Jude flirts with the wrong kind of people, gets drunk too often, ends up on wild hitch-hiking jaunts up and down the country. Until now it has all been fun, a way to let off steam when the relationship she's having with a married woman doesn't work out. Jude doesn't pay much attention to the news: to the young women who have been going missing, to the young women who haven't been returning home, to the dangers out there. That is until she's offered a lift by a couple in a grey car, a couple who have been stalking the roads, looking for someone exactly like her.

- Browns Books Synopsis

The Portico Prize aims to celebrate the diversity of the North of England and to engage public interest in Northern stories, voices, and places. What constitutes the North of England and its geographical, linguistic, and imaginative locations are left to the discretion of those submitting and to the judges.