In 1979, four teenage boys from an elite private school sexually assault a fourteen-year-old classmate, filming the rape. Not long after, the tape goes missing, and the classmate suspected to be the thief is murdered. In the investigation that follows, one boy turns state's evidence and two of his peers are convicted--but the ringleader escapes. A decade later, one of the assailants--moody, angry, unrepentant Fritz McCabe--has been released from prison, only to have a copy of the missing tape arrive at his home with a ransom demand. The McCabes call Kinsey Millhone for help; but even as she's drawn into their family's drama, Kinsey begins to suspect that a vicious sociopath with a grudge against her is leaving traces of himself for her to find....