When a downtown bar erupts in sudden violence that leaves eighty people dead, Lieutenant Eve Dallas discovers that the bar's patrons were exposed to a lethal cocktail of chemicals and illegal drugs that a sinister killer administered through an airborne method.

When Julian Stubs, Ogeechee's oldest living ex-mayor, is murderd the day after the town's bicentennial celebration, Chief of Police Henry Huckabee and Officer Trudy Roundtree soon discover more family mysteries and wonder if the solution is tangled in the branches of the Stubbs family tree.