Could investigating murders be a turn-on? Before she hooked up with a cop Izzy Sain hadn't given the notion any thought. But she's surprised at how much fun it turns out to be, and how chasing down a psychopath with a guy you like puts a brand new spin on the whole boy-girl thing.

The story opens on two brothers working a secret dig to excavate a world-class fossil in Montana's remote Missouri Breaks when unexpected company arrives. Four years later, Izzy, a cattleman's daughter working as a professional photographer, is on a river trip with her old pals and her new lover, a Bureau of Land Management ranger, when she comes across a grisly find. Because she grew up in the Breaks and knows more about this fever dream geography than anyone, she's recruited as a special BLM deputy to help investigate what appears to be a double homicide related to the increasingly lucrative trade in Cretaceous fossils stolen from Federal land.

So begins a torrid, physical, hilarious and harrowing summer of cop work and cop love, a farm implement demolition derby, screeching parties, luscious home cooking, and stunning photography that takes Izzy to a holographic theater operated by Creationists in Alberta, a Hollywood dinner, and back to the Breaks, where two more victims tied to fossil poaching are discovered.

In the end it's Izzy all alone against the killer deep inside one of the strangest and most dangerous terrains in the world.