Australian detective Scobie Malone is asked to investigate what seems like an easy case: Norma Glaze has been strangled in her bedroom and her husband Ron has disappeared. What appears cut-and-dry on the surface is complicated by the fact that the night before involved a one-night stand and a killer with a twisted right hand. Four years later, Malone finds and arrests Ron Glaze in a bush town, but the man insists he is innocent even as the evidence...

Detective Sergeant Harry Belltree, back on the job after a near-fatal confrontation with corrupt colleagues, has become a departmental embarrassment. He can't and doesn't want to return to his post with the Sydney Police Department. Instead, he accepts a post far away from Sydney and attempts to build a quiet life in Newcastle, Australia. But that quiet life quickly eludes him. A body's been found buried just offshore on Ash Island and that one body...