Black, widowed, and mother of two, police detective Marti MacAlister has relocated from Chicago to Lincoln Prairie, Illinois, only to be confronted with small-town attitudes and a partner who's not sure women belong in homicide. But Matthew "Vik" Jessenovik's old-fashioned thinking is far less compelling a problem than a brutal murder at the Cramer Hotel, home to the elderly, poor, and mentally ill. And when Marti and Vik discover that two abandoned children might have seen the killer leaving the crime scene, the case becomes even more urgent as Marti must step up her efforts and use all of her street smarts to find a killer who is desperate to eliminate any possible witnesses to his crime- even if it's two innocent homeless kids...