'Evil, bigotry and doing the right thing. All are done as expertly as ever by a master writer' DAILY TELEGRAPH

Lucas Smothers, nineteen and from the wrong end of town, has been arrested for the rape and murder of a local girl. His lawyer Billy Bob Holland is convinced of Lucas's innocence but proving it means unearthing the truth from a seething mass of deceit and corruption. A corruption endemic in the way it can be only in a gossipy small town where everybody knows everybody else's business.

Billy Bob's relationship with Lucas's family is not an easy one - years back he was a close friend of Mrs Smothers, too close according to her husband Vernon. And when Lucas overhears gruesome tales of serial murder from a neighbouring cell in the local lock-up, the waters are muddied even further and Lucas himself looks like a candidate for an untimely death.

Praise for one of the great American crime writers, James Lee Burke:

'James Lee Burke is the heavyweight champ, a great American novelist whose work, taken individually or as a whole, is unsurpassed.' Michael Connelly

'A gorgeous prose stylist.' Stephen King

'Richly deserves to be described now as one of the finest crime writers America has ever produced.' Daily Mail