Nine years after the events of Veronica Mars, former teenage sleuth Veronica Mars has left the fictional town of Neptune, California, and moved to New York City, where she is in a relationship with Stosh "Piz" Piznarski and has a job offer from the prestigious law firm Truman-Mann and Associates. She is contacted by her ex-boyfriend Logan Echolls, now a Lieutenant in the United States Navy, who has been accused of murdering his girlfriend Carrie Bishop, a fellow Neptune High student who became a self-destructive pop star under the stage name "Bonnie DeVille". He is being bombarded for offers of representation from lawyers, and Veronica agrees to return to Neptune and help Logan find one who will best represent him. She reunites with her father Keith Mars, Neptune's former sheriff-turned-private investigator, who shows her how corruption and classism are rife under Sheriff Dan Lamb.

Following the events of ''Page Eight'', ex-MI5 officer Johnny Worricker (Bill Nighy) is in hiding on the Turks and Caicos Islands. A seemingly chance encounter with Curtis Pelissier (Christopher Walken) leads Johnny to a dinner with several shady American businessmen who comprise a company called Gladstone. The following morning, one of the businessmen is found dead on the beach in suspicious circumstances; Melanie Fall (Winona Ryder), a Gladstone liaison, seems to know more than she lets on. When Pelissier reveals himself to be a Central Intelligence Agency Covert operation who knows Johnny's true identity, Johnny desperately cuts a deal: he will help Pelissier with the investigation of Gladstone in exchange for his silence about his location.