On the afternoon of August 19, 1997, John Harrigan--owner and publisher of the News and Sentinel newspaper in Colebrook, New Hampshire--arrived at his building to find the woman he loved lying dead in the parking lot. Lawyer Vickie Bunnell had been shot and killed by a local carpenter wielding an assault rifle. By then, three more people were already dead or dying. More mayhem was to ensue in an afternoon of plot twists too improbable for a novel. The roots of the incident stretch back twenty-five years, with tendrils deep in the history of New England's North Country.

These bloody events...