Suffering a loss, a woman finds a mysterious book on a subway platform and with it fights to get control of her life.

Picking up one year after the events of the final broadcast episode of "The Good Wife", an enormous financial scam has destroyed the reputation of a young lawyer, Maia Rindell, while simultaneously wiping out her mentor and godmother Diane Lockhart's savings. Forced out of her law firm, now called "Lockhart, Deckler, Gussman, Lee, Lyman, Gilbert, Lurie, Kagan, Tannebaum & Associates", they join Lucca Quinn at one of Chicago's preeminent law firms.

Raymond "Red" Reddington, one of the FBI's most wanted fugitives, surrenders in person at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. He claims that he and the FBI have the same interests: bringing down dangerous criminals and terrorists. In the last two decades, he's made a list of criminals and terrorists that matter the most but the FBI cannot find because it does not know they exist. Reddington calls this "The Blacklist". Reddington will co-operate, but insists that he will speak only to Elizabeth Keen, a rookie FBI profiler.