When the police found the first body, left on a bonfire in the forest, they worried it had the hallmarks of a serial killer. Now, as they find the second, they know for sure. Panic about the “Bonfire Killer” quickly spreads through the sedate suburban area of Southampton. But single mom Aisling Cooley has a lot to distract her: two beloved teenage sons and a quest to find her long-lost father, whom she hasn’t seen since she was a teenager. After much debate, she decides to upload her DNA to an ancestry website. When she gets a match, she is filled with an anxious excitement that her questions about her father’s disappearance from her life might finally be answered. But to her horror, it’s not her father who’s found her. It’s a detective. And they say her DNA is a close match for the Bonfire Killer.

Jonah Sheens is enjoying a moment of peace in a pub garden on his day off when a teenage girl wanders out of the woods. She’s striking, with flame-red hair and a pale complexion. She’s also covered in blood. When Jonah races to help, the girl insists she’s fine. Then she smiles. It’s her sister he needs to worry about. Keely and her sister, Nina, disappeared from a children’s home a week ago. Now Keely is here, but Nina is still missing. Jonah is sure Keely knows where her sister is --- but before she tells him anything, she insists, he has to listen to her story from the beginning. Is she witness, victim or killer? And if Jonah follows the trail of clues in her story, will they lead him to the missing girl --- or distract him until it’s too late?

Louise wakes up. Her head aches, her mouth is dry, her memory is fuzzy --- but she suspects she’s done something bad. She rolls over toward her husband, Niall. The man who, until recently, made her feel loved. But it’s not Niall lying beside her. In fact, she’s never seen this man before. And he’s not breathing. As Louise desperately struggles to piece her memories back together, it’s clear to Jonah Sheens and his team that she is their prime suspect --- though they soon find she’s not the only one with something to hide. Did she do it? And, if not, can they catch the real killer before they strike again?

Aidan Poole logs on to his laptop late at night to Skype his girlfriend, Zoe. To his horror, he realizes that there is someone else in her flat. Aidan can only listen to the sounds of a violent struggle taking place in the bathroom --- and then the sound of silence. When Aidan’s cryptic messages finally reach the police, Detective Chief Inspector Jonah Sheens and his team take the case --- and discover the body. They soon find that no one has a bad word to say about Zoe, a bighearted young artist at the center of a curious web of waifs and strays, each relying on her for support, each hiding dark secrets and buried resentments. Has one of her so-called “friends” been driven to murder? Or does Aidan have the biggest secret of them all?

On a scorching July night in 1983, a group of teenagers goes camping in the forest. When they wake in the morning, the youngest of their group, Aurora Jackson, has disappeared. An exhaustive investigation is launched, but no trace of the teenager is ever found. Thirty years later, Aurora’s body is unearthed in a hideaway that only the six friends knew about, and Jonah Sheens is put in charge of solving the long-cold case. His investigation brings the members of the camping party back to the forest, where they will be confronted once again with the events that left one of them dead and all of them profoundly changed forever.