Dan Rhodes, the easygoing sheriff of Blacklin County, Texas, has won the hearts of readers since the rural lawman's first Anthony-winning adventure, Too Late To Die. Although the elderly members of his staff, Hack the dispatcher and Lawton, the jailer, keep trying to drag Rhodes into the Twenty-first century, Rhodes prefers to rely on his plentiful supply of common sense rather than highfalutin' technical instruments to solve his cases - and solve them he does.

The two old fellows and their ongoing (and good-natured) feuds have always provided fine comedy relief to the bizarre crimes that plague Rhodes's bailiwick, but the challenge in this episode tops them. The incarcerated prisoners are raising the complaint that the jail itself is haunted and they are backed up in this supernatural frenzy by a group of teenagers who burst into the jail screaming that they've seen ghosts in the local cemetery.

It's true that there has been vandalism and robbery at the cemetery, and gravestones and memorial statues are being stolen. But are these ghosts really ghosts? And is there a connection between the two sets of manifestations? All of this becomes a trivial concern when the body of Ty Berry, the leader of the crusade to save the cemetery, is discovered in an open grave. There's almost no evidence; Rhodes is thrown back on his own cunning to solve the murder and exorcise the ghosts