Still coming to terms with the death of her husband, Seth, and frustrated by her experiences with the Charlotte PD, Hammer has made a proposal to the National Institute of Justice to serve as a consultant to troubled police departments throughout the South. When she is hired by the city council to act as interim chief for a year for the much-beleaguered Richmond PD, she hauls West and Brazil along for the ride. Once there, they are greeted with as much enthusiasm as the second coming of the Civil War. But Hammer is nothing if not determined, and she makes a valiant effort to rally her force together with pep talks, motivational strategies, and COMSTAT, a new computer technology borrowed from the NYPD that monitors both crimes and the cops accountable for handling them.

          Hammer’s plans begin to unravel when she and West overhear part of a cell-phone conversation between two men, named Bubba and Smudge, who seem to be plotting a racially motivated, cold-blooded murder. Before Hammer has a chance to look into the ominous phone call, a number of other incidents focus her attention elsewhere. First a hacker breaks into the COMSTAT system and renders it inoperable, leaving a fish-covered grid map of Richmond on the screen. Next the city’s populace grows restless over a string of increasingly daring ATM robberies, the most recent of which involves the execution-style murder of an innocent old woman. The final straw comes when a very talented graffiti artist sneaks into Hollywood Cemetery — the much-revered burial ground of Richmond’s most famous and infamous — and paints a statue of Civil War hero Jefferson Davis to look like a black basketball player. When the local press gets wind of what’s going on, the pressure on Hammer and her colleagues increases.