In Britain circa 1984, the news is dominated by the national miners' strike. The region of Fife in Scotland is hard hit by the strike, devastated economically and shaken by clashes between miners and police. Against this violent and bitter backdrop, heiress Catriona Maclennan Grant and her baby son are kidnapped. The ransom should have gone smoothly, but instead the payoff goes horribly wrong, and Catriona and her son disappear without a trace.

Twenty-four years later, dramatic new evidence discovered by a jogger in Tuscany prompts police to reopen the cold case. Detective Sergeant Karen Pirie leads the investigation. It won't be the only cold case to end up on her desk. A young woman soon walks into the station to report a missing person, Mick Prentice, who abandoned his family in Fife in 1984 to join the strike-breakers down south. Labelled a blackleg scab, he might as well be dead as far as his friends and relatives are concerned.

Past and present intertwine as McDermid, author of the bestselling Tony Hill and Carol Jordan mysteries, weaves a dark novel of psychological suspense.