Private investigator Louis Kincaid sits in Florida pondering his options for celebrating his Thanksgiving Holiday when he opens a letter from Philip, his foster father back in Michigan. Philip seldom asks Louis for anything and the letter's anxious tone tells Louis that he'd better head north and see what it's all about.

When Louis arrives in Michigan, his foster father shares the long ago story of his young love gone bad with a girl named Claudia. The girl's mother decided to step in and end the romance. An apparent suicide attempt lands the young lady in a mental institution where her life is thrown into even more turmoil. After she is reported dead Philip secretly visits the institution and tends her grave regularly for decades. When the mental institution is scheduled for demolition and the bodies in the graveyard have to be relocated it is discovered that Claudia's casket contains nothing but rocks. Philip wants Louis to find out what happened to the body.

A reporter also has an interest in the cemetery because an infamous serial killer is said to be buried there, in spite of rumors that he's still alive and roaming the countryside. Dead bodies begin to show up. The State Police move in to take over the investigation pushing Kincaid and the local police department into the background. Louis Kincaid knows he's on the right track to find the killer so he covertly works around the protective State Investigators and pushes ahead.

In learning of his foster father's tortured past, Louis reopens some of his own old wounds, making the investigation emotional and painful as well as challenging.

This story takes some chilling twists and turns but Kincaid proves equal to the task. He has grown since the first book in this series and the series has grown along with him. This is the best one yet.