It's the eve of the 1980s. Police officer Liz Seeley joins the squad investigating the murders. With a violent boyfriend at home and male chauvinist pigs at work, she is drawn to a feminist collective led by the militant and uncompromising Rowena. There she meets Charmaine—young, Black, artistic, and fighting discrimination on two fronts.

As the list of victims grows and police fail to catch the killer, women are too terrified to go out after dark. To the feminists, the Butcher is a symptom of wider misogyny. Their anger finds an outlet in violence, and Liz is torn between loyalty to them and her colleagues and job.

Ajay Close combines the tension of a police procedural with the power and passion of the Women's Lib movement. By turns emotional, action-packed, and darkly funny, What Doesn't Kill Us reveals just how much the world has changed since the 1970s—and how much it hasn't.