Chilling news: a bomb has demolished the car of Picketsville, Virginia s Sheriff Ike Schwartz, creating a crater in the road and shattering windows up and down the town s Main Street. Is this a cop killing or domestic terrorism? The report devastates Ike s department; his wife, Ruth, president of the local college; his friends and family; and tickles an alert in the office of Charlie Garland, Ike s former colleague at the CIA whose elastic job description includes monitoring Ike s life. Investigations led by more than one player fan around and out of Picketsville as far as a small town in Idaho. If some banks and businesses are too big to fail, are some people are too deeply connected, too important, or too wealthy to bring to justice? Martin Pangborn, head of the radical militia called The Fifty-first Star, is such a person: the tentacles of his organization are alarmingly long and deep. But things are not always what they seem, as Pangborn learns to his dismay. And the Vulture is something no one is prepared for. Readers of the Ike Schwartz novels know that in this, the tenth, as in the previous nine, Ike will ultimately prevail, Ruth will have a lot to say, Charlie will confound officialdom, the Picketsville deputies will show their mettle and justice will be done."