Sergeant Pete Decker is driving through a housing estate one night when he discovers an abandoned toddler in blood-stained pyjamas. As Decker and his partner, Marge Dunn, hunt for the child's parents, the bee-stings they notice all over the child's arm guide them to a honey farm set in the barren scrubland surrounding Los Angeles. It's a tough landscape, populated by hard-working people with little time for city folks, so the two detectives aren't surprised when there is no welcoming party. Nothing, though, has prepared them for the incredible stonewalling from the locals, nor for the grisly sight that greets them in the farmhouse. But Decker and Dunn are professionals to the core and, delving deeper, find a gruesome mystery far more lethal than the ordinary hornet's nest...