When the strangled bodies of a teenaged boy and girl who had everything going for them are found in a station wagon on a deserted estate, the police label the deaths a murder-suicide. But friends of the tragic pair think otherwise and hire Christopher "Kit" Deleeuw to prove the police wrong. Kit is a uniquely '90s middle class hero. Following a disastrous defeat on Wall Street, he's carving out a precarious career as a free-lance detective (his office is in the local mall) and cultivating parenting skills while his wife finds her stride in the world beyond their pretty New Jersey suburb. As the first gruesome crime is followed by a string of macabre acts and another murder, Kit glimpses grim shadows overhanging the serene streets and stylish malls through which he drives his kids to play dates and after-school activities. There are eerie similarities between the current crimes and a bizarre series of killings committed in the same setting a century ago. Is this lurid slice of local history serving as a blueprint - or smoke-screen? What clues to the murders terrifying the present suburb are buried in its distant rural past? Speculation gives way to action as the killer is poised to strike again and the novice homicide investigator faces a baptism by fire that could end a lot more than his new career.