The night after the fourth of July, Layton Carlson Jr., of Red Wing, Minnesota, finally got lucky. And unlucky. He' picked the perfect spot to lose his virginity to his girlfriend, an abandoned farmyard in the middle of cornfields: nice, private, and quiet. The only problem was something smelled bad -- like, really bad. He mentioned it to a county deputy he knew, and when the cop took a look, he found a body stuffed down a cistern. And then another,...

At 1:15 a.m, a Minnesota political fixer answers his doorbell. The next thing he knows, he's waking up on the floor of a moving car, lying on a plastic sheet, his body wet with blood. When the car stops, a voice says, "Hey, I think he's breathing," and another voice says, "Yeah? Give me the bat." And that's the last thing he ever knows. Lucas Davenport is investigating another case when the trail leads to the man's disappearance, then--very troublingly--to...

Book 12 in the Lucas Davenport series. A shallow grave and a pornographic drawing draw Lucas Davenport into a deadly quest for a predator with a single-minded hunger for his chosen prey. In the mist and rain of a Minnesota spring, a shallow grave is found. It contains the body of a young woman, apparently strangled.