Pandemic lockdowns have Ruth Galloway feeling isolated from everyone but a new neighbor --- until Nelson comes calling, investigating a decades-long string of murder-suicides that’s looming ever closer.

Three years after her mother’s death, Ruth is finally sorting through her things when she finds a curious relic: a decades-old photograph of her own Norfolk cottage --- before she lived there --- with a peculiar inscription on the back. Ruth returns to the cottage to uncover its meaning as Norfolk’s first cases of COVID-19 make headlines, leaving her and Kate to shelter in place there. They struggle to stave off isolation by clapping for frontline workers each evening and befriending a kind neighbor, Zoe, from a distance.

Meanwhile, Nelson is investigating a series of deaths of women that may or may not be suicide. When he links a case to an archaeological dis­covery, he breaks curfew to visit Ruth and enlist her help. But the further Nelson investigates the deaths, the closer he gets to Ruth’s isolated cot­tage --- until Ruth, Zoe and Kate all go missing, and Nelson is left scrambling to find them before it’s too late.

Audiobook available, read by Jane McDowell