The novel takes place in the fictional town of Delano, Georgia, over three generations, as three different police chiefs attempt to identify a serial killer operating in the area.

The city council, led by banker and prominent investor Hugh Holmes, chooses farmer Will Henry Lee over Foxy Funderburke, an eccentric, wealthy dog breeder and gun collector, for the job.

A medical examination concludes that the boy died from a broken neck as a result of his fall but also that he had been tortured—cuffed and beaten with a rubber hose—for some time before his death.

Will Henry conducts a thorough investigation but is frustrated in his attempts to locate the killer, not least because the uncooperative Skeeter Willis, the sheriff of Meriwether County, of which Delano is a part, insists that the boy was killed by some of the many transients in the area at the time.

After World War II, Delano welcomes home its returning veterans, including Billy Lee, the late chief's son, a young lawyer who served as a bomber pilot in Europe, and Sonny Butts, a decorated Army infantryman.

He also begins to track the last known sightings of a number of young men, likely runaways, in the years since and notices a geographical pattern in the disappearances: Delano is at their center.

After he beats and kills a local black businessman, a grand jury is empaneled for the purpose of indicting him, though perjured testimony lets him off the hook.

Momentarily distracted by the chance to save his reputation, Sonny is attacked by Foxy, who shoots him and buries him in the new grave with his police motorcycle.

But Tucker harbors a painful secret: He is in fact Willie Cole, whose father killed Chief Lee decades earlier and who, so far as Delano knows, died in an accident not long after fleeing.

Then John Howell, a reporter for The New York Times, convinces Tucker to take his evidence to the FBI and obtain a search warrant through them.

Because Tucker's evidence is totally circumstantial, the FBI only reluctantly agrees to issue the warrant, which is limited to observation (no digging, prying up floorboards, etc.).

The novel ends as Hugh Holmes, pleased for Billy's success in the election but crushed by the revelations about Foxy and the shame the murders will bring to the city he did so much to build, is suffering a potentially fatal heart attack.

The miniseries varies from the novel mostly in the Tucker Watts section, in that there is not as much focus on Billy Lee being a potential running mate for President Kennedy in the 1964 presidential election.