On a night that will haunt him forever, ex-cop Max Freeman killed a twelve-year-old child in self-defense in a Philadelphia shootout. Since then, he has lived on the edge of the Florida Everglades, where he answers to no one but the demons gnawing at his conscience. But when he finds a corpse of a child along a riverbank, he's pulled back into the twisted maze of law and order-as a murder suspect.

Winner of the 2003 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel.