Something offensive is afoot in Emily Kincaid's northern Michigan town - besides her increasingly cranky friend Deputy Dolly. After a brutally slain woman turns up in an abandoned house, they learn that bodies of dead dogs are being thrown into migrant workers' yards - a gruesome warning to keep a despicable secret. Clues to unravel this macabre affair seem woven into the manuscript Emily is editing for an eccentric English author. But reading further into his twisted fiction could spell her death.