A seventeen-year-old girl is found murdered in her home by her mother. At first the Atlanta police believe it is a simple case of one victim, one killer. But when another girl is brutally killed, and a third goes missing soon afterwards, they realise they are dealing with something far more sinister. And the young rookie detective heading up the case suddenly finds herself out of her depth. Atlanta Special Agent Will Trent of the Criminal Apprehension Team is quickly brought in to help the investigation. But with the body count mounting and the local community frozen in terror the killer is proving almost impossible to trace.