Yale College, where the crème de le crème of the intellectuals go to receive an education and a degree; a quiet, beautiful place on a nice weekend... until the unthinkable happens.

Someone has taken over a building on the edge of campus that belongs to one of Yale’s secret societies. Several students are missing, or unaccounted for, including the sons of the Secretary of the Army and the newest Supreme Court Judge.

Time passes, but the kidnappers do not act in any kind of predictable fashion. They make no demands. They release some hostages for no apparent reason and kill others.

Sam Purdy is a suspended Boulder, Colorado policeman. He joins an unlikely team consisting of a maverick FBI agent. Christopher Poe, and a CIA terror expert, Deirdre Drake, to try and discover what is going on and what it will take to bring the hostage situation to an end.

How the kidnappers react is a puzzle to all.  There are no demands, no rules, they refuse to speak with a negotiator and somehow they seem to know the FBI's every move before it is made.

Once again Stephen White has written a taut thriller with a plot that has not been written to death. Great reading.