A mayor with a 72% approval rating watches helplessly as accusations of financial impropriety, burglary, and attempted manslaughter ravage her political and personal future. Retirement home dwellers Esther Haberman and ex-police Sergeant Jim Gadley, along with newly widowed Randall Carter, vow, with no concrete plan in mind, to salvage her reputation. In their investigations, they confront an apparent suicide, by hanging, in a house whose windows are barred and whose doors are secured from the inside; a series of seemingly unrelated terrorist bombings at public venues throughout the country; and a xenophobic racist demagogue suddenly thrust into the lead in polls for the presidency of the United States. The three are shocked to uncover a strong, well disciplined, well financed, and deadly conspiracy behind the disparate events, with the goal of overthrowing the democratic institutions of the United States and establishing a dictatorship. The enemy seems to be everywhere. Who can they trust? How can they escape the fanaticism that decrees death for any who attempt to stand in the way?