Madeline Dare, a former blue blood looking for the right ticket out of her blue-collar community, has just stumbled upon a set of military dog tags at the site of an unsolved 20-year-old double murder. Eerily, the name on the tags is that of her favourite Oyster Bay cousin, the golden boy of a vindictive branch of her family that has resented her since she followed her heart and married Dean, a farmer-genius who's as far from high society as humanly possible.

In her efforts to clear her cousin's name, Maddie finds herself trapped in a minefield of explosive, long-buried family secrets and her search for the truth triggers a string of grisly new murders. The trail of blue blood will stretch from posh Long Island back to the derelict smokestacks of Syracuse - and right to Maddie's own door.