After a crossbow killing at a cheap roadside motel, Ozarks police chief Arly Hanks finds herself investigating her first murder case.

Her marriage over and career gone bust, Arly Hanks flees Manhattan for her hometown: Maggody, Arkansas. In a town this size, nothing much ever happens, so Arly figures she's safe as the town's first female chief of police—until the husband of one of the local barmaids escapes from state prison and heads for town. And that's not all. An EPA official with ties to polluting the local fishing hole has suddenly vanished off the face of the earth.

As if two manhunts aren't enough to contend with, a body has been discovered at the pay-by-the-hour Flamingo Motel, shot clean through the neck with an arrow. For some reason, Maggody's residents—all 755 of them—have gone tight-lipped, stonewalling Arly's investigations, and Arly hasn't a soul to trust but her half-wit deputy. Now, as Maggody's finest, she'll have to show a little muscle and a lot of cunning to curtail the inhospitable mountain malice that's overtaken her town. And she'll have to watch her own back every step of the way.