Deborah Knott, an attorney attempting to infiltrate the old boy network of tobacco country by running for district judge, is distracted from the race, and almost eliminated from it, when she finds new evidence to an old small-town murder.
While participating in the WomenAid project, a program that builds houses for battered and homeless women, Colleton County district judge Deborah Knott finds herself in the middle of a mystery when her niece is assaulted.
A young homicide detective from the LAPD becomes the new focus of an obsessive serial killer who has changed all of his rules, and the wealth of clues left from his previous murders no longer applies.