Young Lizzie Crowne goes missing on the Muriel Campden housing estate, and a hunt for her body is under way when she turns up again. Another teenage girl vanishes on the same estate. Then, just after an elderly paedophile is released from prison, the three-year-old daughter of Fay and Stephen Devenish disappears, leaving them distraught. With the police apparently impotent, residents decide to take the law into their own hands.

Wexford copes with two abductions of teen-aged girls, the disappearance of a 3 year old from her bedroom, and the return of a paroled pedophile to the town.