Crime and Punishment meets Midnight in Paris. Sheriff Ben Lawers, who presides over idyllic Elayne County, couldn't be happier when dazzling sisters Re and Asta Martin turn their attentions on him. However, he soon comes to suspect that their intent may be more sinister than sexy. So the tangling begins in a Gordian kt of deception, desire, and murder that will lead Ben confusing up and down, and fling an entire community into disorder. The turmoil unfolds in Elayne County, Oregon on the glaciated flanks of Mt. Verdandi. A frozen corpse, presumed to be French artist Cochereau, is found accompanied by his dilapidated journal. Trekking through those antique pages, Ben joins the artist in his 19th century flight to the New World where he is tormented by boyhood nightmares in the shape of two sisters with a taste for torture. Parallels between the journal and present day abound as Ben finds himself pursued by the attentions of beautiful and brilliant Re and Asta, who share a diagsis of Raskolnikov's disorder. While Cochereau's attempts to hide bring him closer to the brink of madness, Ben's fatal attraction to the sisters and devolving mental state make him ever more a stranger to his friends. When the agent of murder is finally revealed, will he be able to choose between love and the law?