During the late 1980s, two detectives in a South Korean province attempt to solve the nation's first series of rape-and-murder cases.

Lost in White takes places in the north-east of China, where two bodies have been found under the ice of a frozen lake, their remains made unidentifiable by carnivorous fish, but still bearing the mark of having been dragged with an ice hook. In charge of the investigation is Captain Zhou (Tony Leung Ka Fai), a dedicated cop who's dragging along his teenage daughter Xinyi (Zhou Dongyu). Soon he's joined by Wang Hao (Tong Dawei) a young Shanghai detective who's on a missing person case that has led him to the same village where the murders happened. The two cases prove to be connected: the missing person and the two victims were part of a quartet of businessmen who ten years ago opened a refinery in the region, and disposed of chemical waste in an unethical way that has poisoned the waters and led to malformed babies in the following decade. Is the missing businessman the killer, the next victim or a red herring?