Madison, Wisconsin, 1996.
Nineteen women on a university cross-country team embark on a routine eight-mile run. Only eighteen women finish. Days later, the police find the nineteenth, Andie Sheridan, buried in a shallow grave near the route. The police, the university, and the community cannot understand how someone could attack and murder a woman running in a group. The community braces for more attacks, but none occur.
Two years later, a friend of the victim hires the Ryder Detective Agency to investigate the murder. Seamus O'Neill, an out-of-work local rock & roll musician and part-time detective agency employee, takes an interest in the case and in the victim. Seamus bounces between brewpubs, bars, and rock & roll shows, gaining an understanding of the victim and of the crime. He creates a theory that identifies the killer and explains why there were no witnesses. Yet he has no proof.
Can Seamus O'Neill prove who killed Andie Sheridan?