Little Brian Wilcox's murder is the hottest story in Scotland. Every major newspaper crowds its pages with stories examining the crime from every angle. If only Paddy Meehan could get a scoop on the case. A nationally syndicated story would surely launch her fledgling journalism career out of the free local rag she's been working at.

Dr. Margo Dunlop is at a crossroads. Her adoptive mom just passed away, and Margo misses her so much she can't begin to empty the house - or, it seems, get her brother on the phone. Not to mention she's newly single, secretly pregnant, and worried about her best friend's dangerous relationship. In an effort to cheer herself up she goes in search of her birth mother. Instead she finds Nikki, her mother's sister. Aunt Nikki isn't what Margo expects, and she brings upsetting news: Margo's mother is dead.

Was the biggest case of his career the worst mistake he ever made? Ten years ago, DCI Jack Logan stopped the serial child-killer dubbed "Mister Whisper", earning himself a commendation, a drinking problem, and a broken marriage in the process...When another child disappears a hundred miles north in the Highlands, Jack is sent to lead the investigation and bring the boy home. But as similarities between the two cases grow, could it be that Jack caught the wrong man all those years ago?

Constable Paul Hirschhausen - "Hirsch" - is a recently demoted detective sent from Adelaide, Australia's southernmost booming metropolis, to Tiverton, a one-road town in rustic, backwater "wool and wheat" country three hours north. Hirsch is more than just a disgraced cop, a rumored whistle-blower - internal investigations is still trying to convict him of something, even if it means planting evidence, and someone has a bullet they'd like to put in his head, as has been made clear by the pistol cartridge left in his mailbox.

The tiny outback town of Nannine lies in the harsh red interior of Australia. Once a thriving center of stockyards and sheep stations, years of punishing drought have petrified the land and Nannine has been whittled down to no more than a stoplight, a couple bars, and a police station. And it has another, more sinister claim to fame: the still-unsolved disappearance of young Evelyn McCreery nineteen years ago.