"I settled back and closed my eyes. Questions swirled in my brain, twisting and eddying like the waters of a swollen creek. Who was the third victim? How had he died? Those answers I hoped to find in the lab. When had the death occurred? How had part of the cadaver ended up in a clandestine grave in St Basile? Those queries I figured the Vipers should field. Most perplexing of all was the question of the absent body parts. Where was the rest of the skeleton?" It is a beautiful spring day and in the quiet woods of the FBI's headquarters at Quantico, Dr Temperance Brennan is teaching a body recovery course. Then comes an urgent phone call recalling her to Quebec, where she is forensic anthropologist from the state. A gruesome duty awaits her: a biker war is raging and two of the foot soldiers have blown themselves up. The only person qualified to make sense of what remains is Tempe.

Like many in Montreal, Tempe cares little what les motards - the bikers - do to each other. Until the body of a nine-year-old girl is wheeled into the morgue, slain in biker crossfire.

Sickened and angry, Tempe wows to fight this evil. When an exhumation brings to light a further mystery, she works day and night to uncover the secrets the bones guard. But can she do so before other innocents die in the escalating violence? Entering the dark biker underworld, Tempe finds herself pitted against dangerous outlaws and organised crime. Unable to turn to her sparring partner Andrew Ryan for help, she finds herself increasingly vulnerable.Will she too make the wrong decision - a deadly decision?