Coming of age in Alaska, LOGAN FINCH came to understand the dichotomy of The Last Frontier. Geographic beauty was starkly juxtaposed against harsh, pitch-black winters. Icy streets were strewn with fatal auto accidents and snowplow remains. There were airplane crashes, deadly earthquakes, active volcanoes, and ferocious seas that sank the most experienced fishermen. And there were murders.
Between 1978 and 1983, over 40 young girls vanished from the streets of Anchorage during the wild Alyeska Pipeline construction years. Their gruesome deaths at the hands of a serial killer and the consequences of the false alibi given by a cabinet maker and his wife, drive the plot. That alibi enabled the killer to abduct at least ten more girls and fly them into the Alaskan wilds where, at gunpoint, he forced them to flee nude across the dark icy tundra before executing them as prey.
PETER FOSTER was one victim's father. He blamed the couple's alibi for his daughter's death. When he was later accused of murdering the cabinet maker, he called his friend and former law partner, Logan, to defend him. Logan, a law professor in Arizona, agreed to help. He enlists LACEY CARPENTER, a woman he can't commit to, nor live without, to be his co-counsel. Together they solve the crime and re-ignite their long-distance relationship as Logan learns through his mother's death the importance of having a good relation at the end of one's life.
Logan and Lacey uncover a network of corruption in the Anchorage Police Department. and a powerful evangelical church that concealed JACK JANSEN'S killings to rid the streets of prostitutes.