A young boy running for his life through the snow, his sister hovering between life and death in intensive care: it seems that another father has been driven to the edge and turned on his family when DCI Michael Thackeray reluctantly enters a family home turned blood-stained charnel house. But as he and his lover Laura Ackroyd dig deeper the tragedy becomes darker and much more dangerous. While Thackeray seeks to find where the children's father has gone, Laura begins to ask just who he is. This seems to have been a family with no past long before its future was so brutally taken away. Who is Gordon Christie? Who is he hiding from? Is it only the police who are looking for him? Where has he gone with a loaded gun and his son in tow? And who seems to be obstructing Thackeray's inquiry at every turn, driving him to the brink of resignation and Laura to despair? As things fall apart, the tangle of violence they uncover turns lethal and their lives hang in the balance as the police eventually uncover the full tragedy of the elusive Gordon Christie.