"A lonely woman of 53 vanishes while out on her morning run--hidden in her cupboard is an expensive pair of cuff-links with a note: 'To You, with all possible love from your devoted, Me'. A 22-year-old girl never returns from an early morning walk. An old man disappears too. Experienced policemen know that most missing persons either turn up or go missing on purpose. But fresh young policewoman Freya Graffham is assigned to the case. She's new to...

From the outside, the cathedral town of Lafferton seems idyllic, but in many ways it is just like any other place. It suffers from the same kinds of crime, is subject to the same pressures from a rapidly changing world, and has the same hopes and fears as any number of towns up and down the land. When Simon Serrailler is called in by Lafferton's new Chief Constable, Kieran Bright, he is met by two plainclothes officers, who ask him to take the principal...