In the cold Toronto winter of 1895, the naked body of a servant girl is found frozen in a deserted laneway. The victim was pregnant when she died. Detective William Murdoch soon discovers that many of those connected with the girl's life have secrets to hide. Was her death on attempt to cover up a scandal in one of the city's influential families?

Dolly Merishaw is a midwife and an abortionist in Victorian Toronto, and although she keeps quiet about her clients, her contempt and greed leaves them resentful and angry. It comes as no surprise to Detective William Murdoch when she is murdered, but Murdoch isn't sure if he's hunting one murderer - or two.

After 13-year-old Agnes Fisher faints at school, her teacher is shocked to discover salacious photographs of the girl in her desk. When Agnes doesn't show up at the school the next day, her teacher takes the photographs to the police. Murdoch resolves to find the photographer and to put him behind bars.

The Reverend Charles Howard sat in judgement on the poor, assessing their applications for the workhouse. But now he is dead, stabbed and brutally beaten in his office. Has some poor beggar he turned down taken his vengeance?

In 1858, a young woman on her honeymoon is abducted, taken across the border to the US and sold into slavery. 38 years later, the owner of one of Toronto's livery stables has been found dead, horsewhipped and hung from his wrists in his tack room. The investigation endangers Murdoch's own life.

In 1940, England is desperate and fearful. The threat of a German invasion is real. When a young woman is found murdered on a desolate country road, Tom Tyler, a detective inspector, finds himself drawn into an uneasy alliance with one of the Prees Heath internees, a psychiatrist, who is an expert on the criminal mind.

November, 1940. Tom Tyler, Detective Inspector is asked to help out in an inquiry into an explosion in a munitions factory that has killed several of the young women. At first, it seems more than likely the explosion was an accident, but as Tom talks to the employees of the factory, the cracks begin to appear.

Detective Inspector Tom Tyler is settling into his placement in Ludlow, Shropshire, a small town full of Italian Pows from a nearby internment camp, brought to work the land. Fraternizing is forbidden but, as Tyler knows only too well, the human heart has a way of crossing boundaries.

It is the summer of 1942, and after two difficult years, Tom Tyler is making a fresh start in Ludlow, Shropshire. On the outskirts of town, St. Anne's Convalescent Hospital, staffed by nursing sisters who are also Anglican nuns, has been established in an old manor house to help victims of the war. But their peace is shattered when a horrifying double murder is discovered on the grounds. Tyler must discover how the crime was committed in such a secluded place, where many of the patients are unable to walk or see and most are deeply traumatized. When he begins to receive mysterious letters...