Claire Morgan is a tough-as-nails homicide detective in Canton County, Missouri, in the Lake of the Ozarks region. Her fiery strength, stubbornness and determination to do her job right means she sometimes takes reckless, unnecessary risks. This worries her dedicated fiancé Nick Black and makes him crazy...it's the only thing they fight about in their ardent relationship.

It's the dead of winter during a terrible snowstorm when a corpse, with almost every bone in his body shattered, is found frozen at the bottom of a cliff in a local park. Identification of the victim leads to the utterly violent world of mixed martial arts/ultimate fighters, and Claire finds herself investigating a most bizarre case. She learns that most of these men are brutally trained from a young age in the dark and dangerous backwoods around her area. She also discovers a link to a vicious Russian mafia don in East St. Louis through the dead man's wife, who's also found murdered a few days later. Could this case get any more complicated? Claire soon finds out that it can -- and does -- when she's abducted by the killer. Alone in a cage in the hidden lair of a perverted psychopath with no means of escape and no one knowing where she is, has Claire's luck finally run out?

Incorporating featured characters from previous novels adds another superb level of satisfaction to BAD BONES, a complex and truly chilling psychological thriller from the very talented Linda Ladd. Witty narrative and intense characterization are writing skills applied with expertise making BAD BONES an incomparable reading experience.