Hot-on-the-heels of her multi-award-winning debut, In the bleak midwinter, Julia Spencer-Fleming delivers the latest captivating mystery in her acclaimed series. When the local doctor disappears from the small town of Millers Kill, New York, it doesn't take long for the gossip-mongers to start insinuating foul play. Amidst escalating suspicions that he was "disposed of" due to his ongoing fight against authorities to cut his clinic's funding, Episcopal priest Clare Fergusson and police chief Russ van Alstyne are enlisted to investigate. Neither could have bargained for what they discover, however, as they pursue an investigation that takes them deep into the past, to the Jazz Age, Prohibition, and the Great Depression and to a series of sordid and horrifying secrets one family will risk everything to keep hidden.