Jackson Brodie has relocated to a quiet seaside town, in the occasional company of his recalcitrant teenage son and an aging Labrador, both at the discretion of his ex-wife Julia. It's a picturesque village filled with vacationers and well-off locals, but there's something darker lurking behind the scenes. Jackson's current job, gathering proof of an unfaithful husband for his suspicious wife, would seem unrelated, but a chance encounter with a desperate man on a crumbling cliff leads him into a sinister network, and back across the path of his old friend Reggie.