Evil is stirring in Boston's Chinatown...

When a hand is found in a Chinatown alley in downtown Boston, detective Jane Rizzoli climbs to a nearby rooftop and finds the hand's owner - a woman whose throat has been slashed so deeply that her head is nearly severed.

Two strands of silver hair cling to her body. They are Rizzoli's only clues, but they're enough for her and pathologist Maura Isles to make a startling discovery: this violent death had a chilling prequel.

Nineteen years earlier, a horrifying murder-suicide in a Chinatown restaurant left five people dead. But one woman connected to that massacre is still alive: a mysterious and beautiful martial arts master who knows a secret that lives and breathes in the shadows of Chinatown.

It soon becomes clear that this is an evil that has killed before and will kill again - unless Jane and Maura can track it down, and defeat it.