Alaskan State Trooper Liam Campbell, manning the most isolated police outpost in the United States, has two crime scenes and eight bodies on his hands.

Alaska State Trooper Liam Campbell is all at sea.
He's been demoted and exiled to Newenham, an ice-bound bush town in the middle of nowhere, where he's taken up residence in a leaky old gill-netter on the bay. Newenham is small, but Liam Campbell is quickly finding out that small doesn't guarantee a simple life.

Three months in, Campbell is brooding on how to put down roots on dry land again when a fishing boat is found adrift, burned down to the waterline. Aboard, he discovers seven charred bodies. A terrible accident? Or a cover-up of something worse?

And then a young archaeological assistant is gruesomely murdered at a remote dig site. With eight dead, things are getting out of hand – and Liam is left following a trail of false leads, false confessions, and false hopes.