DCI Vera Stanhope must unravel a tangled web of deceit between two wildly different families when the body of a teenage boy is discovered floating near a Northumberland salmon farm.

When wealthy betting shop magnate Alun Wilmott is shot and killed after returning home early amid a terrifying home invasion, it's assumed that he is the unlucky victim of a burglary gone wrong.  The culprits abscond with a huge amount of cash from Alun's personal safe, leaving his wife and daughter traumatised in their wake.  Vera suspects an inside job and immediately targets the affluent neighbourhood's shady head of private security, Ciaran Duggan, whose history of violent crime calls his reformed character into question.