Melvin Mars awaits his fate on Death Row. He was one of America's most promising football stars until, aged twenty-years-old, he was arrested and convicted for the murder of his parents just as he was due to begin a very lucrative contract with the NFL. When Amos Decker, newly appointed special agent with the FBI, hears the news that Melvin was saved in the final seconds before his execution because someone has confessed to the killings, he persuades...

Amos Decker and his FBI partner Alex Jamison are visiting Decker's hometown of Burlington, Ohio, when he's approached by Meryl Hawkins-- the first person Decker ever arrested for murder back when he was a young detective. A dozen years in prison have left Hawkins unrecognizably aged and terminally ill, but one thing hasn't changed: he maintains he never committed the murders. Could it be possible that Decker made a mistake all those years ago? Digging...

Amos Decker witnesses a murder just outside FBI headquarters. A man shoots a woman execution-style on a crowded sidewalk, then turns the gun on himself. Even with Decker's extraordinary powers of observation and deduction, the killing is baffling. Decker and his team can find absolutely no connection between the shooter--a family man with a successful consulting business--and his victim, a schoolteacher. Nor is there a hint of any possible motive...