On a rainy morning in a coastal town in Washington state, a young woman begs Sam Troshin, a sportswriter for the local paper, to help her get rid of the body of a man who raped her teen-aged friend. His actions lead to his discovery of a trial thirty years earlier where three boys were acquitted of raping a high-school classmate. Two of those boys, middleaged men now, have died in peculiar circumstances. The third has disappeared. The town newspaper speculates: has the victim returned to avenge herself? A burnt-out pickup truck, a volleyball prodigy, an aging hitman, and a well-funded play in the local theater all have their part as Sam tries to find the third of the accused rapists.

On a rainy morning in a coastal town in Washington state, a young woman begs Sam Troshin, a sportswriter for the local paper, to help her get rid of the body of a man who raped her teen-aged friend. His actions lead to his discovery of a trial thirty years earlier where three boys were acquitted of raping a high-school classmate. Two of those boys, middle-aged men now, have died in peculiar circumstances. The third has disappeared. The town newspaper speculates: has the victim returned to avenge herself? A burnt-out pickup truck, a volleyball prodigy, an aging hitman, and a well-funded play in the local theater all have their part as Sam tries to find the third of the accused rapists.

America is driven by vengeance in Terry Aladjem's provocative account – a reactive, public anger that is a threat to democratic justice itself. From the return of the death penalty to the wars on terror and in Iraq, Americans demand retribution and moral certainty; they assert the 'rights of victims' and make pronouncements against 'evil'. Yet for Aladjem this dangerously authoritarian turn has its origins in the tradition of liberal justice itself – in theories of punishment that justify inflicting pain and in the punitive practices that result. Exploring vengeance as the defining problem of our time, Aladjem returns to the theories of Locke, Hegel and Mill. He engages the ancient Greeks, Nietzsche, Paine and Foucault to challenge liberal assumptions about punishment. He interrogates American law, capital punishment and images of justice in the media. He envisions a democratic justice that is better able to contain its vengeance.