A Welcome Grave, the third novel featuring Cleveland private investigator Lincoln Perry, begins with murder. Once a rising star on the police force, Perry ended his career when he left one of the city's prominent attorneys, Alex Jefferson, bleeding in the parking lot of his country club - retribution for his affair with Perry's fiancee. Now Jefferson is dead, the victim of a brutal murder, and his widow has called upon Perry for a favour he knows he shouldn't accept but can't turn down: to find Jefferson's estranged son, partial beneficiary of the dead man's fortune. The case is simple enough, a routine locate. The encounter should be simple, too, a brief exchange of information and maybe an empty condolence before Perry gets back into his truck and returns to Ohio. Instead, he's loaded into a police car and taken to a rural jail while Jefferson's son is zipped into a body bag. Perry soon learns that Jefferson's millions are the target of a thirst for revenge that hasn't been satisfied by blood. As a pair of deadly assailants push deep into the investigator's life, they bring with them police from two states who are determined to see Perry in Jail.