Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks has recently moved to the Yorkshire Dales from London to escape the stress of the metropolis. But he soon finds that life in the country is not quite as idyllic as he had imagined.

A peeping Tom is frightening the women of Eastvale. Two glue-sniffing thugs are breaking into homes. An old woman may or may not have been murdered. In addition, Banks has to deal with his attraction to a young psychologist Jenny Fuller. As the tension mounts, both Jenny and Banks’s wife are drawn deeper into events. And Banks realises that his cases are weaving closer and closer together …