When an army officer is found dead in the small Virginia town of Hopewell, the murder sets in motion a sequence of events that will forever change the life of Sheriff A.G. Farrell. A.G.'s investigation is hampered by a strangely hostile provost marshal from the murdered captain's base and by the captain's enigmatic widow, Theresa Fitzgerald, whose beauty, like the terrible heatwave that hangs heavily in the Southern summer air, leaves soldiers and civilians alike gasping for relief. When a thin thread ties together the otherwise unsuspicious deaths of four young women over the past four years, A.G. struggles to retain his sense of objectivity and propriety as sexual tension grows between Theresa and himself, while facing down the provost marshal whose rush to judgement will get the wrong man hung for murder.