It’s a hot, early autumn evening in the small resort town of Mount Charleston, NV, where six firefighters are battling a massive blaze that threatens expensive homes . . . a blaze that will cost them their lives. Initially, the police determine that the fire was human-started, and the state wants to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law with six counts of homicide. Now the team of Sin City’s finest criminologists, led by Catherine Willows, are assigned to work a crime scene far from the glittering lights and 24/7 spectacle of the Las Vegas Strip, and soon find much more than they bargained for. . . . Meanwhile, Ray Langston and Nick Stokes are called to a crime scene where a dog has taken a key piece of evidence—a severed human hand—under a suburban home’s crawl space. What’s even more disturbing is that it’s not the first severed hand that’s turned up lately—there have been four other incidents around Las Vegas over the past twelve months. . . .

Jeff Mariotte is the award-winning author of more than seventy novels, including thrillers Empty Rooms and The Devil’s Bait, supernatural thrillers Season of the Wolf, Missing White Girl, River Runs Red, and Cold Black Hearts, and horror epic The Slab. With his wife, the author Marsheila Rockwell, he wrote the science fiction/horror/thriller 7 SYKOS, and numerous shorter works. He also writes comic books, including the long-running horror/Western comic book series Desperadoes and graphic novels Zombie Cop and Fade to Black. He has worked in virtually every aspect of the book business, including bookselling, marketing, editing, and publishing. He lives in Arizona, in a home filled with books, art, music, toys, and love.