Visiting 16-year-old "Rat" Perkins at isolated Evenson boarding school, Maura Isles is astonished to learn that all of his classmates are survivors of violence and are being instructed in scientific detective skills, a discovery that coincides with Jane Rizzoli's investigation into the murder of a boy's foster family.

Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles are plagued by the seemingly senseless murder of a widow and nurse, who, as they investigate further, is linked to an open hit-and-run case from months earlier that someone will kill to keep from being solved.

Detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles go into the wild to find a killer. After linking a recent Boston crime to a series of unsolved homicides in wilderness areas across the country and the killings of tourists in the bush of Botswana six years earlier, they plot to cage the hunter before he strikes again.