Joe Gunther is sent to the neighboring town of Bellows Falls to investigate harassment allegations against a fellow officer. But as Gunther doggedly pursues the truth, what begins as a seemingly open-and-shut case starts to look more and more like a frame job, and he soon finds himself feeling around the edges of a statewide drug distribution network.

As always, Vermont itself is a major character in Mayor's writing, with Bellows Falls standing in for any number of slowly decaying, once-proud mill towns.