In the searing heat of Guatemala Dr Temperance Brennan excavates the remains of a two-year-old child from a site that is said to contain the bodies of twenty-three women & children. Shaken by the discovery Tempe tries to harden herself against the horrors that she finds. & then four young girls go missing from Guatemala City... When a skeleton is found in a septic tank at the back of a rundown hotel only someone with Tempes expertise can deduce who the victim was & how they died. But her path is blocked at every turn. It would seem that some people would prefer that Guatemalas disappeared stay buried. & others want the missing girls kept the same way...