Recently retired NCIS agent Billy Boy Boyd has just returned home to Tennessee. Hes looking forward to enjoying some free time, but that fantasy doesnt last long. His friend Blinky, an often drunk and bitter Vietnam veteran, has just called about an apparent suicide down by the river. There isnt a body yet—just a suicide note and the remains of a hand.

A search party is formed, and Blinky, Boyd, and his high school sweetheart, Smokey, start combing the area by the Nolichucky River for the victim. But its soon apparent that this investigation may be more than they bargained for. A missing girl, a jilted lover, the Mafia, and revenge bring Billy to a disturbing conclusion: that murder is the order of the day, and he might be next on the hit list.

In a novel filled with every deadly sin in a land of moonshine and legends, O. Ray Knapp sweeps you to the whitewater rivers of the high Appalachian Mountains, where the peace and tranquility of a small, mountain community is rocked by murder.