It is a boiling hot summer in Boston. Adding to the city’s woes is a series of shocking crimes in which wealthy men are made to watch while their wives are brutalized — a sadistic demand that ends in death. The pattern suggests one man: serial killer Warren Hoyt, recently put behind bars. Police can only assume an acolyte is at large, a maniac basing his attacks on the twisted medical techniques of the madman he so admires. At least that’s what Detective Jane Rizzoli thinks. Forced to reconfront the killer who scarred her — literally and figuratively — she is determined to finally end Hoyt’s awful influence. But this time around, the vendetta is more vicious than she ever would have imagined.