The first thriller in the New York Times No.1 bestselling series featuring Penn Cage: a prosecutor in a corrupt system, a husband whose wife has died, and a father who must protect his daughter. 'An engrossing, page-turning ride' (Jeffery Deaver). Penn Cage is no stranger to death. As a Houston prosecutor he's sent sixteen men to death row - and now he's lost his wife to cancer. Returning home to Natchez, Mississippi with his only daughter, Penn seeks a gentler life. No chance. After discovering that his father is being blackmailed over a long-forgotten homicide by the killer he never turned in, Penn is soon up to his neck in the town's murky undercurrents of passion, power and racial tension. This is a community with a dark past. A place where a thirty-year-old crime lies buried. A place where everyone plays the quiet game but Penn Cage cannot stay silent.