When a happily married man with no financial or health worries attends the funeral of someone he knew only slightly 20 years before and then promptly commits suicide in a most dramatic way it is unclear to Detective Inspector Mark Hobson and Detective Sergeant Peter Bennett whether any crime has been committed. Hobson soon learns that the man had a secret which deeply troubled him, and when his widow receives an anonymous note accusing her late husband of murder it becomes obvious that nothing is as it appears to be. DI Hobson finds himself re-examining the apparent accidental death of a local farmer, the shooting of a valuable pedigree dog and the activities of a group of teenage boys who were running wild two decades earlier. Past and present then start to intertwine to tell a story of family breakdown, unwanted pregnancy, a widow's fight to clear her husband's name and a woman's attempts to find happiness, and all the time their actions are being monitored by a psychopathic monster with murder in mind. Hobson is helped in his endeavours by his beautiful wife Helena and by DS Bennett but finds himself bitterly opposed to Detective Inspector Robert Earnshaw an ambitious and utterly ruthless colleague who seems determined to undermine him.