Deer Lake is a small Minnesota town where people know their neighbours and crime is something that happens on the evening news. But the illusion of safety is shattered when eight-year-old Josh Kirkwood disappears. All the police find is his duffel bag with a note stuffed inside, 'Ignorance is not innocence but SIN'.

With each passing hour the search for Josh takes on a more ominous intensity. For Megan O'Malley, the new regional officer of the state criminal investigative unit, it is a test of whether she can cut it in the all-male world of local cops. And for police chief Mitch Holt, it is a frightening reminder of the big city crime that devastated his life before he fled to Deer Lake ...