This debut thriller about an explosive relationship between an ER physician and a psychiatrist who treats violent sociopaths combines the gripping forensic detail of Patricia Cornwell and the spare, haunting prose of Michael Connelly.

After a failed career and marriage in California, Hugh Davoren is back in Helena, Montana, as a construction hand at the old Pettyjohn Ranch, home of many childhood memories-including the seemingly accidental death of his teenaged first love, Celia. Hugh is just trying to get through another long workday on the ranch when he discovers two dead stallions. A further probe into the matter only pushes Hugh into dangerous corners, as he finds that the...

After a twenty-year absence Renee Callister is back in Helena, Montana, to bury her estranged father. John Callister was a local pariah believed to have had a hand in his wife's murder when she was protesting the opening of a controversial silver mine. But the discovery of disturbing photographs and one silver earring in her father's home is causing Renee to reexamine her stepmother's death in a shocking new light-and sending her to Hugh Davoren for...