Lucas Davenport has a new job - a trouble-shooter on the cases that are too complicated or politically touchy for others to handle. He's married now, and a new father, all of which is fine with him: he doesn't mind being a family man. But he is a little worried. If there's one thing Lucas Davenport knows, it's that for every bit of peace you get, you have to pay - and he's waiting for the bill. It comes in the form of two people found hanging from a tree, in the woods of northern Minnesota. What makes it particularly sensitive is that the bodies are those of a black man and a white woman, and they're naked. "Lynching" is the word that everybody's trying not to say - but, as Lucas begins to discover, the murders are not, in fact, what they appear to be. And there is worse - much, much worse - to come...