Virgil knows the town of Trippton, Minnesota, a little too well. A few years back, with the help of a retired schoolteacher, he investigated the corrupt--and as it turned out, homicidal--local school board, and now the teacher's back with even more alarming news: Somebody is killing "her girls."

Over the past year, three women from the same high school class of twenty years ago have been found dead in unusual circumstances, and now that there's a mid-winter reunion coming up, she doesn't know what might happen.

Neither does Virgil, but as he wraps his coat a little tighter and begins to dig into twenty years' worth of traumas, feuds, and bad blood, one thing becomes increasingly clear to him. It's true what they say: High school is murder.