Virgil Flowers was brought into the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension by a promise from Lucas Davenport: "We'll only give you the hard stuff." He's been doing the hard stuff for the past three years now, but he's never seen anything like this. In the small rural town of Bluestem, an old man is bound in his basement, doused with gasoline, and set on fire. This is the third murder in as many weeks and it's becoming clear that Flowers has stepped into a killer's violent and personal vendetta - one that's only begun to take its toll. But in a quiet town, where everybody knows everybody, personal could implicate just about everyone.