WHEN Gene Rivers' breakfast is rudely interrupted in order to identify the body of a murdered woman he last saw twenty years ago, he knows the past has finally caught up with him, that he will soon pay the price for the mistakes he made back them. Unsure whether the killing marks the close of unsettled business or the start of a new chapter, lifting the lid on old grievances and buried injustices that have festered for half a lifetime, he employs PI Evan Buckley to investigate. In a small town on the Maine coast, Evan unearths a series of brutal unsolved murders, and the more he digs, the more the evidence points to a far worse crime hidden beneath forty years of lies and deceit. Meanwhile Evan's own past refuses to lie still as, unknown to him, Detective Kate Guillory scratches an itch with unforeseen and disastrous consequences, increasing the burden weighing on his conscience as he faces an impossible dilemma - disclose the terrible secrets he's uncovered or assume the role of hanging judge and dispense a rough justice of his own.