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