Lucas Davenport deals with security concerns during preparation for the Republican National Convention, as a criminal from his past targets his fourteen-year-old daughter.

Lucas Davenport investigates the discovery of several bodies in an abandoned Minnesota farmyard, and realizes they are the work of a local serial killer who has been murdering one victim every summer for years.

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...

When his adopted daughter's friend reports that someone has been killing off a circle of nomadic panhandlers, Lucas travels to North Dakota, where he encounters a dangerously violent subculture.

Terrified by her goth-associated daughter's disappearance and the signs of a deadly struggle in their home, a widow implores Lucas Davenport to use his connections to local authorities to expedite the investigation, which subsequently reveals the work of a serial killer.