In the Memphis summer, the heat clings heavy like a second skin. Olivia Dale's job as a novice crime reporter is at once surreal - stepping in and out of strangers' lives with her notebook - and all too real. As she studies the curled-up body of a young woman who has been kidnapped and gruesomely killed, she observes that "the place has the postapocalyptic stillness that comes when something terrible has been and gone, as though even the air has slowed like a passing car to survey the damage." Staring at the girl's painted toenails, Olivia wonders: Could I have been that girl? After all, as she chases a lead story, Olivia discovers that Allison Avery - so all-American, so similar to Olivia in age and looks - was more like her than she wants to believe.Partly out of gutsy ambition to get a front-page story and partly to reassure herself that this could not have been a random act, Olivia becomes determined to find out who the murderer was. As she grows more and more obsessed with Allison, Olivia begins to shuck off her own cautious self and become everything she believes Allison was: charismatic, vivacious, and unafraid. She too begins to flirt with living as close to the edge as possible, with nearly tragic consequences. Read Less