Summer, 1973. Led Zeppelin just played at the Baltimore Civic Center. Heels are stacked, pants are tight, hair is long, and for Terry Abel and her friends, senior year is right around the corner: life is good.

But when a night of field-party drinking leads to a violent mistake that can't be undone, nobody's life will be the same.

Across the decades that follow, memories of that evening are never far from the five friends-certainly not for Rodney Willis, who spends four years in prison as a result.

More than thirty years later, when an enterprising journalist decides to write about the case, he reopens wounds that never really healed and threatens to reveal truths that have long been buried, forcing an uneasy reunion among friends whose only hope of survival was silence.

'Perhaps the greatest living American crime writer' STEPHEN KING

'Listed among the best' OBSERVER

'Not just recommended: this is essential reading' LEE CHILD

'Crime writing that few will ever match' FINANCIAL TIMES

'The guy's a national treasure' DENNIS LEHANE

'Pelecanos is incapable of writing a book that isn't gripping' THE TIMES