On the surface, John Meredith appears to have it all. He’s blessed with good looks and a successful police career, and he’s never short of female attention. But is everything as it seems? What lies beneath the smooth, confident exterior? Is he a man who has simply plastered over the cracks of a dysfunctional childhood, betrayals, and heartbreak? Can he allow anyone close or will they see the joins and the damaged person that he really is?

Callum is lured to an isolated boathouse by an attractive older woman. When she gets him alone, she knocks him out with a single blow. Surrounded by hills and lakes, Still Waters is home to a close-knit community of wealthy retirees. It's an unlikely setting for violence. The police don't take Callum's disappearance seriously: he's 24-years-old, after all. But Callum's mother, a Still Waters resident, knows that something is very wrong. Then a body is discovered floating in the lake. Head bashed in. But it's not Callum. And someone tweets: Come out to play one last time, Alice. 

Former detective sergeant Norman Norman’s retirement is boring him to tears. So when he’s asked to assist an upcoming female DI and mentor a new team of misfits in a sleepy Welsh coastal town, he jumps at the opportunity. But the training has barely begun when a woman’s corpse washes up on the sand. With no reports of missing persons, DS Norman is stumped...until the post-mortem reveals a shocking hint to the culprit being local. But with a growing list of suspects who all have alibis, the experienced cop and his fledgling team’s first case could be their last.

Charlie Birch is dead. A knife, thrust into his chest, has effortlessly sliced through his right ventricle, quite literally breaking his heart, which given his past behaviour, was perhaps a fitting end. An unexpected chain of events had placed a desperate Charlie and many of the Middle Mound villagers in the White Hart pub that morning. Then Charlie decided to hold them all hostage. That was his last mistake. 

The young man with the shock of white-blond hair lay spread-eagled on the floor, surrounded by fallen books. His hand reached out to the scattered pages, as though he was trying to tell her something. But who is he? How did he come to be killed in Flora’s ordinary little bookshop? Flora finds out he was staying at the Priory Hotel, and when the gardener suddenly dies in its beautiful grounds only a few days later, she is certain that something untoward is happening in her quiet village by the sea.