When the electricity fails one snowy night, Jay Baldwin, a power-company foreman, leaves his Red Lodge, Mont., home to investigate. He later phones his wife, Sabrina, to report that someone has cut trees so that they have fallen onto power lines. Back at the house, Sabrina is confronted by an armed intruder, Garland Webb, who takes her hostage for an unknown reason. Webb, who was just released from prison for sexual assault, is the quarry of PI Markus Novak, who suspects Webb of murdering the detective's wife, Lauren, in Cassadaga, Fla. Before Webb left prison, he arranged for a fellow prisoner to call Markus and taunt him--which only strengthens the widower's resolve to bring Webb to justice and to figure out a cryptic phrase, "Rise the dark," which Lauren wrote in a notebook right before her death.