Dunsmore: a quiet one-road town in the backwoods of Florida, too far off the highway to be noticed. When local bully Ronny Roy Pritcher is brutally murdered, the media descends on this small town, and Special Investigator Walter Taylor is sent to question the local townspeople. At first no one will talk to an outsider-but gradually Taylor learns the details of Pritcher's sadistic reign of terror and the horrifying events leading up to his death.