Small-town boy Humphrey Larsen comes back home to Melville, North Carolina, in 1979 after college and traveling around the world. He expects a quiet life returning, doing what he wants after a big inheritance. But he finds that his hometown has changed. And he has changed. His inquisitiveness gets him in trouble.

Along with his best friend and other friends, they solve criminal cases in the small foothill town of Melville. They solve those because the local police can't or won't. Larsen is a part-time teacher, part-time writer, and part-time volunteer but a full-time criminologist. He is seen as a small-town Sherlock Holmes, but without the genius and eccentricity.

But his first case comes back to haunt him and the town. A case five years previously, in 1974, was a simple, easy, safe one, but it became the most dangerous. The man that got away, "The Shadow", a dangerous killer, threatens not only Humphrey Larsen but his friends. And anyone in town who will try and stop him.

With the worries of catching the "Shadow", Humphrey has to deal with his complicated relationship with his girlfriend Amy, along with his new infatuation with one Becky Johnson.

Will Humphrey and his friends stop him, ending the killer's rampage? Or will the killer get Larsen or any of his friends, or Amy? Or any other of the cast of characters in small-town Melville.?