When protests about a superstore chain's plans to build a location in a Minnesota river town escalate into bombing attacks at the construction site and the company's headquarters, Virgil Flowers races against time to find and stop the bomber.

Jimmy Sharp, Becky Welsh, Tom McCall. They were Bonnie and Clyde, they thought, and what's-his-name, the sidekick. Three teenagers with dead-end lives, and chips on their shoulders, and guns. The first person they killed was a highway patrolman. The second was a woman during a robbery. Then, hell, why not keep on going? As their crime spree cuts a swath through rural Minnesota, some of it is captured on the killers' cell phones and sent to a local...

In southern Minnesota, a young man murders a local farmer, drops the body into a grain bin, and then calls the sheriff to report the 'accident.' Suspicious, the sheriff calls in Virgil Flowers, who quickly breaks the kid down. The next day the boy is found hanging in his cell. Virgil suspects foul play, and as he investigates he begins to uncover a multigeneration, multifamily conspiracy - a series of crimes of such monstrosity that even he has difficulty...

Hard-as-nails ex-soldier and former cop Virgil Flowers is sent to Bluestem, Minnesota, a small town where everyone knows everyone else, to investigate the murders of a man burned to death in a house explosion and the double murder of a doctor and his wife, unaware that he is tracking a murderer who may be targeting Virgil as his next victim.

Summoned by Lucas Davenport to investigate a pair of murders in which the victims are found with lemons in their mouths, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigator Virgil Flowers struggles to find a connection that could prevent additional killings.

"In southeast Minnesota, down on the Mississippi, a school board meeting is coming to a close. The board chairman announces that the rest of the meeting will be closed, due to personnel issues. "Issues" is correct. The proposal up for a vote before them is whether a local reporter should die. And the vote is four to one in favor. Meanwhile, not far away, Virgil Flowers is doing a favor for a friend by looking into a dognapping, which seems to be turning...