On Christmas Eve, Wexford and Burden are called to the Kingsmarkham Hospital. A baby has been stolen from its pram and another baby left behind in its place, and it seems that the mother of the stolen child may also be in danger.

Gwen Robson, a middle-aged housewife who proves to have been a blackmailer, is found garotted in the car park of a suburban shopping mall. Wexford is no sooner on the case than a car bomb goes off and all but kills him, putting him in hospital. This leaves Mike Burden with the task of solving the case, but he goes off on the wrong scent. Wexford's analysis is better, though.

An old man, Sir Mañuel Camarque, dies when he loses his foothold on a dark winter night, slips into a lake and drowns under the ice. It looks like an open-and-shut case. However...Camarque, who was a world-famous flautist, planned to marry Dinah Sternhold, a woman young enough to be his grand-daughter. The banns of the marriage had just been read for the third time in church and Sir Mañuel was nervous. Dinah tells Wexford that Camarque had suspicions that his daughter Natalie (who would inherit his fortune) was not his daughter at all but an impostor. Wexford investigates, and develops a theory of an intruder who pushed the old man into the lake.

Wexford goes on holiday to Corsica and on arriving home receives a call from a man he met there who claims his wife has been kidnapped. Wexford investigates and finds that the missing woman is in fact dead.

Luke Crossland is a respectable widowed Church of England clergyman, with an important job in a cathedral... but his wife's death came about in strange circumstances, and now Luke's eldest daughter wants to know more about what happened...

Luke Crossland is a respectable widowed Church of England clergyman, with an important job in a cathedral... but his wife's death came about in strange circumstances, and now Luke's eldest daughter wants to know more about what happened...

tuffy young accountant Martin Urban wins a fortune on the football pools, with the help of his friend Tim Sage, and plans to give it away. But then he meets and falls for Francesca, who, alas, is promised to another... Martin is drawn another way, which may even lead to murder.

In the present day, a man goes back to the place where, as a small boy, he disappeared for a day. The circumstances were mysterious at the time and have yet to be explained.

Young Lizzie Crowne goes missing on the Muriel Campden housing estate, and a hunt for her body is under way when she turns up again. Another teenage girl vanishes on the same estate. Then, just after an elderly paedophile is released from prison, the three-year-old daughter of Fay and Stephen Devenish disappears, leaving them distraught. With the police apparently impotent, residents decide to take the law into their own hands.