In a provincial Australian town a serial killer is targeting young boys. When criminologist Joss Haskell is called in to provide a profile of the murderer, he finds himself the subject of police scrutiny. Why is his house fitted out like a high-security fortress? How can he know so much about these killings? And why does his skin show the same cross-hatching as the bodies of the dead boys? Joss Haskell is a hunted man. His family has been torn apart and he lives in daily fear of his life. As he probes the background of the killer he must come to terms with a troubled history of his own, and wit the fact that everything changes - except the past.