In the tomblike silence of an abandoned rock quarry, someone is trying to hide their dirty little secret. A secret that reveals the depths of human depravity. A secret that is about to be discovered. When FBI Special Agent Maggie O'Dell receives a call from Sheriff Henry Watermeier of New Haven County, Connecticut, she assumes it's a routine tip. She's working on the case of a missing D.C.-area woman, and it seems her body had been found. But Maggie's about to learn this is just the tip of the iceberg in what will be one of the most bizarre, cold-blooded and confounding cases of her career a a criminal profiler. During a cleanup excavation in the deserted quarry, a fifty-five-gallon drum was discovered, containing the remains of a woman. Then more barrels are found, containing more bodies: some of the dead have been brutally murdered, and some have already been buried. At this grisly discovery, Sheriff Watermeier calls in the FBI, as well as a forensic anthropologist, Dr. Adam "Bones" Bonzatto, in hopes of identifying the victims and ultimately the faceless killer. Maggie arrives in Connecticut and begins to profiles the killer -- and quickly recognizes a pattern to his madness. The victim range widely in age and include both men and women, but they have one thing in common: they all suffered from an illness or physical deformity of some sort. And the part of their body that was inflicting is missing. As bizarre as it seems, the killer appears to have a fascination, an obsession with his victims' imperfections With only an old man who suffers from Alzheimer's as a witness to the killer's identity, Maggie realizes time is running out. Because another woman has gone missing, and the old man's illness has made him the next target. Determined to put an end to the killing, Maggie has to dig deeper into her own resources than she's ever done before to catch this killer of unparalleled madness.