Homicide Detective Virgil Flowers doesn't think much can surprise him anymore. He's wrong. It's a hot, humid summer night in Minnesota, and Flowers is in bed with one of his ex-wives when the phone rings. It's Lucas Davenport. There's a body in Stillwater, two shots to the head, found near a veterans' memorial. And the victim has a lemon in his mouth. Exactly like the body they found last week. The more Flowers works the murders, the more convinced he is that someone's keeping a list - and that list could have a lot more names on it. If he could only find out what connects them all ... But when he does start to piece the clues together, he discovers that this case leads down a lot more trails than he thought it did - and every one of them is booby-trapped.