There are old cases and there are cold cases, and then there are old, cold cases… Special Agent Joe Gunther, of the newly-formed Vermont Bureau of Investigation, didn’t expect the VBI’s first case to be a fifty year-old murder. Then again, the victim probably didn’t expect to get an icepick in the heart, spend half a century in a chest freezer, and be unceremoniously dumped on a mountain. He was, after all, a man who commanded some respect.

Stirring up the past can be a dangerous business, and Gunther soon finds himself in a cross-border partnership with the Sûreté du Québec, investigating a Canadian mob family whose crimes date back to World War II, but who remain just as deadly as ever.Why has he resurfaced in such a dramatic way so many years later? Joe and his new squad travel between the cultural divide of Canada and Vermont, uncovering – among other things – some long lost secrets dating back to the Italian campaign in W.W.II, and the existence of a combat group nicknamed The Devil’s Brigade.