When a woman mysteriously disappears, Detectives Jimmy Perez and Willow Reeves are assigned to the case and discover that the victim had an unhealthy and obsessive interest in a cold case involving the drowning of a local child.

Hoping for a fresh start, an English family moves to the remote Shetland islands, eager to give their autistic son a better life. But when a young nanny's body is found hanging in the barn beside their home, rumors of her affair with the husband spread like wildfire. As suspicion and resentment of the family blazes in the community, detective Jimmy Perez is called in to investigate.