Medicine Creek, Kansas. In a town where nothing changes, where Main Street is a two-block stretch of old and dusty businesses, a ghastly murder has taken place. The unknown victim has been placed in a small clearing in a sea of corn, mutilated and arranged in an elaborate tableau. Within twenty-four hours the sheriff is assuring a flood of reporters and tense residents that this is an isolated death - until Special Agent Pendergast arrives in the stifling August heat to declare it the work of a serial killer. Soon neighbors begin to disappear - only to reappear as the lifeless centerpieces of unspeakable displays. Convulsed with terror, the townsfolk whisper of the legendary Curse of the Forty-fives. No one is safe from a killer who stalks his prey in the blackness of night ... and whose grotesque crimes are revealed by circling buzzards under the cruel summer sun.