Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel has barely left her house in months, isolated away from friends and colleagues. She may have given up on herself but one man is sure she still has something to offer. DCI Jack Cole gives her a chance at redemption: An opportunity to help a neighbouring force by discovering what is going on with a reclusive community living in a stately home in the middle of nowhere. People are going missing, turning up dead with only a vague link back to the house. But can Jessica beat her own demons in time to find out exactly what's going on behind closed doors?

Dead bodies are piling up for Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel. Usually when a serial killer is on the loose, the pressure would be building to find the perpetrator but the victims are all hardened criminals themselves. The national media can't believe their luck with an apparent vigilante on the streets, while Jessica's new boss seems grateful someone else is doing their job for them. But things aren't so straightforward when forensics matches blood from the apparent killer to a man already behind bars.

Someone has left a severed hand in the centre of Manchester and the only clue Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel has to go on is CCTV footage of a woman in a long black robe placing it carefully on the ground. With a lengthy missing persons list and frantic families wondering if the body part could belong to their absent loved ones, she has plenty to deal with — and that's before a detached finger arrives for her in the post. By the time a second hand is found and a local MP's wife goes missing, Jessica is left struggling to find out who the appendages belong to, how they are connected and just what the mysterious woman in black has to do with it all.

When a body is found in a locked house, Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel is left to not only find the killer but discover how they got in and out. With little in the way of leads and a journalist that seems to know more about the case than she does, Jessica is already feeling the pressure — and that's before a second body shows up in identical circumstances to the first. How can a murderer get to victims in seemingly impossible situations and what, if anything, links the bodies?

Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel is first on the scene as a stolen car crashes on a misty, wet Manchester morning. The driver is dead, but the biggest shock awaits her when she discovers the body of a child wrapped in plastic in the boot of the car. As Jessica struggles to discover the identity of the driver, a thin trail leads her first to a set of clothes buried in the woods and then to a list of children's names abandoned in an allotment shed. With the winter chill setting in and parents looking for answers, Jessica must find out who has been watching local children, and how this connects to a case that has been unsolved for 14 years. This is book four in the Jessica Daniel series, following on from Locked In, Vigilante and The Woman In Black.