In such a small community as the Falkland Islands, a missing child is unheard of. In such a dangerous landscape, it surely can only be a terrible tragedy. When another child goes missing, and then a third, it's no longer possible to believe that their deaths were accidental, and the villagers must admit that there is a murderer among them. Even Catrin Quinn, a damaged woman living a reclusive life after the accidental deaths of her own two sons a few years ago, gets involved in the searches and the speculation.

At dawn one hot summer morning, while swimming down the river, Lacey Flint finds the body of a shrouded young woman in the water. She assumes it was chance, but further investigation leads her policing team to suspect the woman’s body was deliberately left for Lacey to find. Lacey is no longer a homicide detective, but as she begins to notice someone keeping a strangely close eye on her, she’s inexorably drawn into the investigation.

Like everyone reading the newspapers these days, 10-year-old Barney Roberts knows the killer will strike again soon. There will be no warning about who will be next. There will be no real reason for Barney’s friend and neighbor, Lacey Flint, to become involved…and no chance that she can stay away. With the clock ticking, the violence escalating, and young lives at stake, Lacey and Barney both know they can’t afford a single wrong step if they hope to make it through alive.

When a rash of suicides tears through Cambridge University, DI Mark Joesbury recruits DC Lacey Flint to go undercover as a student to investigate. Although each student’s death appears to be a suicide, the psychological histories, social networks and online activities of the students involved share remarkable similarities, and the London police are not convinced that the victims acted alone.

One night, Lacey Flint, a young detective constable, stumbles onto a woman brutally stabbed in a building’s darkened parking lot. Within 24 hours, a reporter receives an anonymous letter that points out alarming similarities between the murder and Jack the Ripper’s first murder.