Six months ago, Lucas Davenport tackled his first case as a statewide troubleshooter - and he reckoned one was plenty strange enough. That was before the Russian got killed. On the shore of Lake Superior, a man named Vladimir Orslov is found dead - three holes in his head and heart. When it turns out the victim had very high government connections, that 's when it really hits the fan. A female Russian cop flies in from Moscow; Davenport flies in from Minneapolis, law enforcement and press types swarm the scene - and in the middle of it all, there's another murder. Are the two connected? What is the Russian cop hiding from Davenport? Is she really a cop at all? Why was the man shot with fifty-year-old bullets? To find the answers, Davenport must follow a trail back to another place, another time, and battle the shadows he discovers there - shadows that turn out to be both very real and very deadly ...