It was a very cold, very clear morning in the Carlos Avery game reserve – cold enough to preserve the body lying there, clear enough so the state investigator couldn't miss it. There was something familiar about the stab wounds, she thought – but the Minneapolis police dismissed her theories, and the city's new police chief has problems enough of her own. The cops are wary of her, the public thinks she's too political, the feminists think she's sold out. And this damn murder just won't go away.

Caught in the middle, the chief turns to Lucas Davenport for help, and reluctantly, he agrees. Still recovering from his near-fatal wounds of the year before, trying for once in his life to settle down with one woman, Lucas has his own concerns, but something about this murder, and another like it – the body found in a dumpster this time – teases him, and the more he looks into them, the more he's sure the investigator is right. There is something disconcertingly familiar about the wounds now only in these two cases, but just maybe in several others as well. Somewhere out there lurks a killer of unusual skill and savagery. And if Lucas is right, he's just getting warmed up . . . .