Confronted by an election campaign for which he has no heart, Sheriff Conor Gifford moves to Richmond where he joins two old friends, Governor Graham Martin and Attorney General Samantha Darrow. On the very day that he assumes command of his new organization, the Office of Special Investigations, an assassin's bullet kills Martin and Darrow. Shunted aside by the Commander of the State Police who resents the very existence of Gifford's peculiar new organization, Gifford conducts a parallel investigation that leads him into the depths of Virginia politics where he finds himself besieged by politicians of both parties as they maneuver to attain the Commonwealth's highest office. Robert L. Skidmore is the author of sixteen novels.