In hot legal water—and court-ordered therapy—private investigator Tess Monaghan accepts an assignment with a local nonprofit organization to review police documents for inconsistencies and investigative blunders surrounding five unsolved Baltimore homicides. The cases seem unconnected except for the suspicion that each brutal death was the result of domestic violence.

But curiosity is soon pulling Tess off the paper trail and into dangerously unfamiliar territory, as she joins forces with a police officer obsessed with bringing a murderer down. Scant leads and intuitions are pointing the disgraced p.i. toward the most remote corners of Maryland, where a psychopath can hide as easily in the fabric of a tiny fishing community as in the alleys and shadows of Charm City. And a single, shocking common thread seems to be tying all the loose ends together into one bloody knot: Tess Monaghan herself.