In Cambridge, Jackson Brodie, a private investigator and former police detective, is quietly contemplating life as a divorced father when he is flung into the midst of three resurrected old crimes: a child who mysteriously disappeared from a tent in her back garden; an unidentified man who marched into an office and slashed the throat of a young girl; and a young woman found sitting in her kitchen next to the body of her husband, an axe buried in his head.