It's June in Montreal, and Tempe, who has left a shaky marriage back home in North Carolina to take on the challenging assignment of director of forensic anthropology for the province of Quebec, looks forward to a relaxing weekend.

First, though, she must stop at a newly uncovered burial site in the heart of the city. One look at the decomposed and decapitated corpse, stored neatly in plastic bags, tells her she'll spend the weekend in the crime lab. This is homicide of the worst kind. To begin to find some answers, Tempe must first identify the victim. Who is this person with reddish hair and a small bone structure?

Something about the crime scene is familiar to Tempe: the stashing of the body parts, the meticulous dismemberment. One case in particular comes to mind: the murder of sixteen-year-old Chantale Trottier, who'd arrived in the morgue naked, less than a year before, and packaged in plastic garbage bags. Tempe's convinced there are parallels between the two cases, but it will take more victims to persuade her police colleagues.

Knowing there is a killer on the streets who may soon find a new victim, Tempe calls upon all her forensic skills, including bone, tooth, and bitemark analysis and X-ray microfluorescence to try to prove that the cases are related and to stop the killer before he strikes again. The next victim may be closer to home - Tempe's longtime friend Gabby, her college-age daughter Katy, or Tempe herself.