Jackson Brodie -- private detective, Francophile, divorcé, overprotective father -- tools around Cambridge tailing wives who are suspected of adultery, work that only drives home the pain of his own recently dissolved marriage. When three new cases fall into his lap -- all officially "cold," as far as the police are concerned, and all brought to Jackson by relatives of the murdered or missing -- he's grateful for the work, as well as for the opportunity...

Once it had been the great forest of Lythe -- a vast and impenetrable thicket of green with a mystery in the very heart of the trees. And here, in the beginning, lived the Fairfaxes, grandly, at Fairfax Manor, visited once by the great Gloriana herself. But over the centuries the forest has been destroyed, replaced by Streets of Trees. The Fairfaxes have dwindled too; now they live in 'Arden' at the end of Hawthorne Close and are hardly a family...