Annie arrives at the scene of a murder on Eastvale moor to find a paralysed female in a wheelchair who has had her throat cut. Meanwhile, DCI Banks is called to the scene of a girl found murdered in an alleyway.

Banks is asked by Superintendent Gerry Rydell to track down his missing daughter, Emily, and Annie gets lumbered with an armed carjacking and the murder of a small time crook, Charles McKay.

When DCI Alan Banks receives a disturbing message from his brother Roy, he drops everything to find him, just as new recruit DI Helen Morton finds evidence linking Banks to the body of a murder victim.

A professional hitman bursts into the home of Keith Rothwell and shoots him dead.

When a teenage schoolgirl is found strangled, Banks and his team quickly identify their prime suspect. But the closer Banks seems to move to a conviction, the more the course of the investigation distances him from Helen.

When a man and a woman claiming to be social workers come to Katy Heath’s house and tell her that they need to take away her son Kyle, Katy complies. But when they fail to return her son and are unknown by social services, DCI Alan Banks is quickly drawn into a full-scale search for the missing boy. Why has Kyle been abducted and what are the chances that he can be found alive?