Trouble comes in bunches for Stephanie Plum. First, professional grave robber and semiprofessional loon Simon Diggery won't let her take him in until she agrees to care for his boa constrictor, Ethel. Stephanie's main qualification for babysitting an extremely large snake is that she owns a taser--whether that's for use on the wandering serpent or the petrified neighbors remains to be seen.

Events take a dark turn when headless bodies start appearing across town. At first it's just corpses from a funeral home and the morgue that have had the heads removed. But when a homeless man is murdered and dumped behind a church, Stephanie knows that she's the only one with a prayer of catching this killer.

If all that's not enough, Diesel's back in town. The six-foot-tall, blond-haired hunk is a man who accepts no limits--that includes locked doors, closed windows, and underwear. Trenton's hottest cop, Joe Morelli, isn't pleased at this unexpected arrival, nor is Ranger, the high-powered security consultant who has his own plans for Stephanie.

As usual, Jersey's favorite bounty hunter is stuck in the middle, with more questions than answers. What's the deal with Grandma Mazur's latest online paramour? Who is behind the startling epidemic of mutilated corpses? And is the enigmatic Diesel's sudden appearance a coincidence or the cause of recent deadly events?