Frank Corso already survived a defrocking by The New York Times, following his alleged fabrication of a major crime story. Having since re-created himself as a true-crime writer, he can ill afford to have his credibility questioned again. So when, in G.M. Ford's A Blind Eye, he is subpoenaed to back up his book-selling boast about a Texas high-society murder, Corso disappears into the upper Midwest with his photographer (and former lover), Meg Dougherty--only to stumble onto one of the most horrific stories of his career.

Seeking shelter after an SUV accident in tiny, blizzard-racked Avalon, Wisconsin, Corso discovers the bones of Eldred Holmes and his sons shoved beneath an abandoned barn. Neighbors thought the family had moved away 15 years before; instead, its males had been murdered. Bargaining with Avalon's sheriff to stay free of the Texas authorities, Corso agrees to investigate these killings. The solution may lie with Eldred's wife, Sissy, an exotic seductress whose skeleton isn't among the pile, and whose deliberately obscured--and bloody--trail leads the author and Dougherty to a slain nun in Pennsylvania, a family-destroying fire among isolated hill folk in New York, and a desperate, deadly ambush in northern Michigan. It doesn't take the rangy Corso long to realize that he's dealing with a protean and controlling killer, immune to remorse.