Marked by tragedy, traumatized at the age of eight, Michael, now eighteen, is no ordinary young man. Besides not uttering a single word in ten years, he discovers the one thing he can somehow do better than anyone else. Whether it’s a locked door without a key, a padlock with no combination, or even an eight-hundred pound safe … he can open them all. It’s an unforgivable talent. A talent that will make young Michael a hot commodity with the wrong people and, whether he likes it or not, push him ever close to a life of crime.

In rural, impoverished Burgoyne County, New York, a pattern of strange deaths begins to emerge: Adolescent boys and girls are found murdered, their corpses left hanging in gruesome, ritualistic fashion. Senior law enforcement officials are quick to blame a serial killer, but their efforts to apprehend this criminal are peculiarly ineffective.

Detective Jake Jackson left London for a quiet life in Caelum Parvum. The idyllic country village offers the peace he craves—tending to his chickens, swimming in his lake, and spending long, lazy evenings with his new love, Livia. It’s the perfect setting for their relationship to blossom. Then a case from the past re-emerges, shattering the calm and plunging Jake into the shadowy world of No Taboo—a clandestine group which serves the extravagant whims of Britain’s elite.

Dr Olivia Winter is a forensic psychologist whose job is to understand the minds of serial killers. There’s only one monster she can’t understand, her father.

The Quartz County, Alabama district attorney has charged Destiny Grace Harper with murdering her unborn twins—a crime punishable by death. However, Alabama v. Harper isn’t your ordinary homicide case. Harper’s babies suffered from a rare disorder called TTTS, a fatal condition if left untreated, but correctable with minimally invasive surgery. Harper refused the surgery on religious grounds, resulting in the death of both babies, and now Harper is on trial. Enter Elvis Henderson, a traveling criminal defense attorney who roams the country in his campervan.