In Fault Line, forensic geologist Emily Hansen finds herself in a heavenly situation - for a geologist, anyway. Salt Lake City, on the eve of hosting the Olympics, is hit with an earthquake, Em's first; she's delighted to see her science at work, live and in color, instead of in a lab as usual. Not that it's all fun and games - the quake is relatively minor in terms of damage, but the possibility of a much larger disaster looms.

In the meantime, the geological event brings her a job. For the past few months, while trying to move forward in her relationship with her boyfriend, Ray, a cop in Salt Lake, Em has been consulting for and training with the FBI as an unofficial investigator. When a state-employed geologist is murdered hours after the quake, the Feds ask Em to put her special brand of detection skills to work on the case. The disaster already has the local government types edgy, and a murder at the height of the emergency gets even the governor's attention. Em must use all the investigatory tools in her arsenal to uncover what in the dead geologist's life - earthquake-related or not - could have made her the target of a killer.