Marty Mackenzie is an unsuccessful stage actor who takes an interest in private investigating. He takes a job working with Jack Potter, a crusty private eye. They both take a case in Beaver Ridge, a seedy small town where a murder is being planned against a rich gravel pit owner. Marty realizes that private investigating is not as it seemed to be.
Convicted corporate criminal Howard engineers a prison break as he and a number of fellow inmates are being transferred to a new facility. The escapees storm a shopping mall and take a group of shoppers hostage (after killing many more of them) before making their demands. Only Rudy, a former mercenary and brother of one of the fugitives, can take out the criminals before more of the hostages die.
FBI agent Joel Campbell, burnt-out and shell-shocked after years spent chasing serial killers, flees L.A. to begin a new life for himself in Chicago. But five months later, Joel's best laid plans are abruptly cut short when his new hometown becomes the setting for some particularly gruesome murders--murders that could only have been committed by one man: David Allen Griffin. One of Joel's most elusive and cunning nemeses, Griffin has followed his former pursuer to Chicago in order to play a sadistic game of cat and mouse. Taunting Joel with photographs of his intended victims and leaving his crime scenes meticulously free of clues in order to keep the police at bay, Griffin derives as much pleasure out of watching Joel react to every movement as watching his victims die. But when Griffin moves into Joel's inner circle, Joel must quickly find some way to stop him before someone close to him becomes the next one to die.