Theodore Tate never forgot his first crime scene - 10-year-old Jessica found dead in the Laughterhouse, an old abandoned slaughterhouse. The killer was found and arrested. Fifteen years later, a new killer arrives in Christchurch, and he has a list of people who were involved in Jessica's murder case, one of whom is the unfortunate Dr. Stanton, a man with three young girls.

Cemetery Lake begins in a cold and rainy graveyard, where Private Detective Theodore Tate is overseeing an exhumation. But doubts are raised about the identity of the body found in the coffin.

Joe Middleton doesn't remember killing anyone. He calls himself Joe Victim, but others know Joe as the infamous Christchurch Carver, and they want to see him dead. There's Melissa, Joe's accomplice in one of the murders, who plans on shooting him on his way to the courthouse before he gets a chance to start talking. Then there's Raphael, whose daughter was one of the Carver's victims.

There's a common plea detectives get from the loved ones of victims: When you find the person who did this, give me five minutes alone with them. And that's exactly what someone is doing. Someone is helping these victims get their five minutes alone. When the body of a convicted rapist is found, the detectives try to determine if this is murder or suicide. The following night two more rapists go missing. It's hard to investigate when everyone on the police force seems to be rooting for the killer.

Twenty years ago a serial killer was caught, convicted, and locked away in New Zealand's most hellish penitentiary. That man was Edward's father. Edward has struggled his entire life to put the nightmares of his childhood behind him. But a week before Christmas, violence once again makes an unwelcome appearance in his world. Is Edward destined to be just like his father, to become a man of blood?