In The Man by the Sea, John "Slim" Hardy, heavy drinker and disgraced soldier turned bumbling private detective, is hired to investigate Ted Douglas, an investment banker who slips out of work every Friday to visit a desolate cove on the Lancashire coast. In The Clockmaker's Secret, John “Slim” Hardy comes upon something buried in the peat on Bodmin Moor - an unfinished, ticking clock that holds the key to a decades-old mystery and missing-persons case. In The Games Keeper, he is hired to uncover the identity of a blackmailer, a person already killed.

When secretary Annie Parkes is snatched from the street outside of her workplace, David Kane is tasked with finding her. Strong, highly skilled, and secretive, he’s a loner and an outsider; the only man the military trust to find Annie before her kidnappers make good on their promise to kill her. But as Kane pulls Annie from a derelict building, gunshots ringing through the deserted streets around them, he realizes rescuing her is just the beginning. He needs to keep her close to find out who is behind her capture, and to keep her safe.

FBI Special Agent Eve Hope can’t escape the shadow of her notorious serial killer father—though he is jailed, the puzzle of the loving father of her childhood haunts her, and now, assigned to a copycat case, she is forced to face her worst memories. Can she stop this new killer before he claims a new victim—while saving herself from being swallowed by her past?

Island life suits Susan, and she can’t imagine ever moving from her beloved Isle of Wight. So it gives her real pleasure to see her young lodger Colette settle in to life by the sea, especially knowing that she has such a troubled past.

Harley, reeling from her being put on leave, from her long-term relationship falling apart, and from her father’s dying, is hardly ready to return to her hometown, to its long-buried secrets, and her tortured past. She spent her life escaping this small town—but, as she settles back in, she wonders: Might she have been wrong all this time? Yet as more bodies surface and as every clue leads to a dead end, Harley, clashing with her new partner, realizes she’s in a race against time.