A harsh winter and a heated land dispute make for a deadly combination in this gripping installment of A. B. Guthrie Jr.'s acclaimed mystery series It's forty degrees below zero in Midbury, Montana, and the cattle are dying. Not from the frigid temperatures, but under bizarre circumstances that stir up rumors of blood cults and UFOs. As if that weren't bad enough, a strip-mining company has moved into town with plans to tear apart the land in search of coal. Sheriff Chick Charleston and his loyal sidekick, Jason, try to keep tensions between the outsiders and the locals from boiling over, but when a murder occurs at the Chicken Shack, the miners' local hangout, the situation threatens to spin out of control. To save a community and a way of life that mean everything to them, the sheriff and Jase must track down a killer whose blood runs as cold as a Great Plains winter.