Thompson's fall from grace is precipitated by his investigation when a Mormon polygamist is murdered in an elk-hunting camp near Jackson Hole. As fate would have it, the dead man is a first cousin to Tom's ex-wife and their son is a witness to the hideous murder. Tom's investigation takes him to Moab, Utah where he finds himself neck-deep in a slough of fundamentalist religionists, a Mormon militia, militant lesbians, and others who teach him a new definition of the word "weird". And in the middle of all the craziness, his nemesis appears in the form of a billionaire intent on seducing his new wife.