On her thirteenth birthday the daughter of a Bradford Judge is kidnapped in West Yorkshire, sparking Operation Shade - a massive fifty detective investigation working against the clock to try to locate and save her. Knowing the chances of Sophie Kenyon surviving diminish dramatically after the first twenty-four hours, Detective Chief Superintendent John Munro begins to crack under the pressure of holding together an enquiry swamped with leads. Meanwhile, left off Shade because of her past encounters with Munro, DC Karen Sharpe is pursuing her own single handed enquiry into historic child abuse allegations. Twenty three year old Pamela Mathews says a local MP raped her ten years before. The task of finding corroboration looks hopeless, but Sharpe keeps at it. Anything rather than face up to her own tangled personal life. She lives with a lawyer she doesn't love and is trying to care for a child who thinks she is her Aunt. The truth is more complex and frightening, leading back to still unresolved events from a year before when her ex drug squad boss was shot dead in an incident most of West Yorkshire Police thinks she is to blame for.