"In the long-waited spin-off to the award-winning Raine Stockton Dog Mystery Series: Former Hanover County Sheriff Buck Lawson leaves the mountains of North Carolina to take a job as the police chief of the small south Georgia town of Mercy, and soon finds himself in over his head. For one thing, his predecessor has been murdered... Leaving behind two failed marriages and a job that almost cost him his life, all Buck wants for himself and his new family is a fresh start. But Mercy is a town with a past as dark as the Blood River that runs through it, and the crime that resulted in the death of the beloved former chief of police may have its roots in an evil that goes back generations. Buck has inherited an unsolved homicide, a house that may well be haunted and a police department that is almost certainly corrupt. It falls to Buck to free an innocent man and bring the former police chief's killer to justice while wading through the quagmire of incompetence and dishonesty that permeates his office. His efforts are both hampered and assisted by the benevolent despot of a mayor who runs the town like her own fiefdom and has no compunction about bending the law to suit her will. His only true ally, Buck comes to understand, is the dead man himself. When a young college student goes missing, Buck has reason to suspect foul play that may involve one of his police officers. He must rely on his gut to point him to those he can trust. But as the evidence leads him closer to an unthinkable truth, he realizes he is retracing the footsteps of the former police chief. Will the path lead him, as it did his predecessor, to his grave?"--Back cover.