Police Lieutenant Robert O'Brian takes early retirement after being shot in a drug raid and returns to his home town in the mountains of Eastern Tennessee, Prosperity, which he had left under a cloud years earlier, thought to be responsible for the death of a local man. O'Brian's plan is to write a second crime novel. His writing is interrupted by his participation in the investigation of the death of a high school friend, Bradley McLean, the most prominent citizen of McLean County, not to mention his involvement with Bradley's sister Jesse.