An encounter with an old enemy draws Vera into a cold case investigation with ties to her father. Former detective superintendent John Brace was convicted of corruption and involvement in the death of a gamekeeper- and DI Vera Stanhope played a key part in his downfall. Now, Brace promises Vera information about the disappearance of Robbie Marshall, a notorious wheeler-dealer who disappeared in the mid-nineties, if she will look out for his daughter...

Investigator Vera Stanhope searches for a young man's killer and uncovers a small town's secrets. On a hot summer on the Northumberland coast, Julie Armstrong arrives home from a night out to find her son murdered. Luke has been strangled, laid out in a bath of water and covered with wild flowers. The stylized murder scene has Inspector Vera Stanhope and her team baffled ... and intrigued. Meanwhile, the killer prepares for another watery grave ......

For fifty years a group of friends have been meeting regularly for reunions on Holy Island, celebrating the school trip where they met, and the friend that they lost to the rising causeway tide five years later. Now, when one of them is found hanged, Vera is called in. Learning that the dead man had recently been fired after misconduct allegations, Vera knows she must discover what the friends are hiding, and whether the events of many years before...