Pandemic lockdowns have Ruth Galloway feeling isolated from everyone but a new neighbor--until Nelson comes calling, investigating a decades-long string of murder-suicides that's looming ever closer. Three years after her mother's death, Ruth is finally sorting through her things when she finds a curious relic: a decades-old photograph of her own Norfolk cottage--before she lived there--with a peculiar inscription on the back. Ruth returns to the cotƯtage to uncover its meaning as Norfolk's first cases of Covid-19 make headlines, leaving her and Kate to shelter in place there. They struggle to stave off isolation by clapping for frontline workers each evening and befriending a kind neighbor, Zoe, from a distance. Meanwhile, Nelson is investigating a series of deaths of women that may or may not be suicide. When he links a case to an archaeological disƯcovery, he breaks curfew to visit Ruth and enlist her help. But the further Nelson investigates the deaths, the closer he gets to Ruth's isolated cotƯtage--until Ruth, Zoe, and Kate all go missing, and Nelson is left scrambling to find them before it's too late.