Far from true

Cal Weaver is a private investigator hired to look into a break-in at the house of a man who has recently died. Inside the basement he discovers a concealed room that seems to have served some secret, probably illegal, purpose. Someone has also taken a stash of DVDs from it, and Cal begins to suspect the thief wanted something other than the discs.

In the same town, Detective Barry Duckworth is working two murders. One happened three years ago, and he is convinced both crimes are linked because each victim bore the same unusual wound. He senses that the answer may lie in the tangled case Cal is chasing. As falsehoods start to come apart and a new killing takes place, the two men are pulled toward a buried secret.

The story is set in Promise Falls, a fictional small town where old wrongs are resurfacing. Linwood Barclay, a Canadian author known for suspense fiction, builds the book around the investigators and the community's hidden history, with tension that keeps shifting between past and present.