British mystery writers love aristocratic families with lots of secrets to hide and skeletons in their closets. Author David Baldacci has taken that formulation farther than Agatha Christie in providing a vast number of characters for a serial killer to have a field day. In the small hamlet of Wrightsburg, Virginia, a wooded countryside with a large lake, bodies keep falling like leaves in autumn. But this murderer is playing a game with the police, the FBI, and with ex-Secret Service agents Sean King and beautiful, Olympian athlete Michelle Maxwell (whom we last met in Baldacci's "Split Second.")

The PI's are brought into the case to prove the innocence of local, good old boy Junior Deaver who has been accused of burgling the contents of hidden compartments in the closets of Bobby and Remmy Battle, the paragons of the wealthiest family in the area. As the bodies pile up, police chief Todd Williams deputizes King and Maxwell to aid in the investigation.

Each of the killings are set up to resemble the work of famous serial killers, from John Wayne Gacy to San Francisco's Zodiac and, invariably, includes placing a watch on the dead body's wrist, with the hour set to the victim's number on his scorecard. But, that doesn't tend to explain the motive or provide a logical connection.

To complicate matters, another killer is using the gory trail of blood to mask their own murder spree, making it seem like everyone has it in for the aristocratic Battle family, staff and wronged parties from their past. By the time the killer has claimed his 9th victim (!) you'd think he'd reveal himself by being the only one left standing, but Baldacci provides enough survivors to avoid solving the mystery simply by the process of mass elimination.